it's too horribly horrible." She repeated
her groan. "If by any ridiculous chance you are right, the man will
think that I have been leading him on!"

"LEADING HIM ON!" Mrs. O'Donovan Florence suppressed a shriek of
ecstatic mirth. "There's no question about my being right," she averred
soberly. "He wears his heart behind his eyeglass; and whoso runs may
read it."

"Well, then--" began Beatrice, with an air of desperation... "But no,"
she broke off. "YOU CAN'T be right. It's impossible, impossible. Wait.
I'll tell you the whole story. You shall see for yourself."

"Go on," said Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, assuming an attitude of devout
attention, which she retained while Beatrice (not without certain starts
and hesitations) recounted the fond tale of Peter's novel, and of the
woman who had suggested the character of Pauline.

"But OF COURSE!" cried the Irishwoman, when the tale was finished;
and this time her shriek of mirth, of glee, was not suppressed. "Of
course--you miracle of unsuspecting innocence! The man would never have
breathed a whisper of the affair to any soul alive, save to his heroine
herself--let alone to you, if you and she were not the same. Couple that
with the eyes he makes at you, and you've got assurance twice assured.
You ought to have guessed it from the first syllable he uttered. And
when he went on about her exalted station and her fabulous wealth! Oh,
my ingenue! Oh, my guileless lambkin! And you Trixie Belfont! Where's
your famous wit? Where are your famous intuitions?"

"BUT DON'T YOU SEE," wailed Beatrice, "don't you see the utterly odious
position this leaves me in? I've been urging him with all my might to
tell her! I said... oh, the things I said!" She shuddered visibly. "I
said that differences of rank and fortune could n't matter." She gave a
melancholy laugh. "I said that very likely she'd accept him. I said she
couldn't help being... Oh, my dear, my dear! He'll think--of course,
he can't help thinking--that I was encouraging him--that I was coming
halfway to meet him."

"Hush, hush! It's not so bad as that," said Mrs. O'Donovan Florence,
soothingly. "For surely, as I understand it, the man doesn't dream that
you knew it was about himself he was speaking. He always talked of the
book as by a friend of his; and you never let him suspect that you had
pierced his subterfuge."

Beatrice frowned for an instant, putting this consideration in its
place, in her troubled mind. Then sudden