or ten impressive seconds.

"Bess," remarked Dorothy tentatively, "suppose mamma were to forbid me
loving one whom I loved----" Here she broke down, aghast.

"My dear Dorothy," cried the other, surprised into deepest concern,
"your mother didn't see him kissing your fingers, did she?"

"Oh, no, Bess," said Dorothy hurriedly, "we were quite alone."

"You foolish girl," returned Bess. "You alarmed me!"

"But really, Bess," persisted Dorothy, "to put it this way: if your
mamma insisted, would you give way and marry a man you didn't love?"

"You mean Count Storri," replied Bess. "Now, Dorothy, listen to me. In
the first place, you are an arrant hypocrite. You pretend to be soft and
powerless and yielding, and to appeal to me for counsel. And all the
time you are twice as obstinate as I am, and much less likely to accept
a man you don't love, or give up one whom you love."

"Well, Bess," said Dorothy defensively, a bit stricken of these truths,
"really, I want your opinions on marriage."

"Oh, that is it! Then snap your fingers in the teeth of command, and
marry no man whom you do not love!"

"But the man you love might not want you!" sighed Dorothy.

"The man you love will always want you," declared Bess with firmness.

"How sweet you are!"

"And as for parents making matches for their daughters," continued Bess,
unmoved of the tribute, and speaking as one who for long had made a
study of the world's domestic affairs, "it is sure to lead to trouble
and divorce."

"Is it?" asked Dorothy, appalled.

"It is!" returned Bess with a sepulchral air, as though pronouncing
doom. Then, mocking Dorothy's serious face with a little tumult of
laughter, she went on: "There; it's all decided now the way you wished.
You are to refuse Count Storri and marry Mr. Storms without bestowing
either care or thought on what Mamma Harley or Papa Harley or Uncle Pat
may say or do about it."

"Really, Bess, how much better you have made me feel. After all, there's
nobody like a wise, dear, true friend!"

"The value of such a friend is beyond conjecture," returned the mocking
Bess, reassuming her tones of the oracle.

The memory of Richard's kisses on her fingers never left Dorothy all
that day and all that night. Those fortunate little fingers seemed
translated into something rosily better and apart from herself. And brow
and ears and eyes and cheeks and lips went envying those lucky fingers;
and in the end the lips crept upon them