must have things made smooth for them, mustn't
they, at the end of the book?"

And she took the girl, fresh from Suzanne's finishing touches, to
George's study.

"George won't be coming in for half an hour, dear," she said. "There are
heaps of papers and books, but no looking-glass. So you'll be able to
forget your pretty self for a few minutes."

And off went the fairy godmother--to meet Sir Randal Bellamy on the
stairs.

"But you're staying to lunch," she expostulated.

"If you say so, of course I am," said Randal.

"I've left Amaryllis in George's study. She wants you to see I have
looked after her as well as if she'd been at home with her father and
you."

She passed him, but turned two steps above.

"I wish you'd seen Dr. Caldegard looking at her fast asleep in bed last
night," she said in a low voice, very tender. "It was a picture--the
kind one keeps."

"Yes," said Randal. "I was in the other room, you know, looking at
mine."

And he went down the stair, wondering how a woman he had seen last night
for the first time had managed to get that sentimental speech out of
him.

Amaryllis rose as he entered, and almost ran to meet him.

"Oh, Randal!" she cried.

He had known his gentle doom on the Friday; and her "Randal," _tout
court_, sealed it, for never had she used his name so to him before. It
came now, he knew, not in his own right, but through Dick.

In a single emotion, he was sorry and glad--more glad, he told himself,
than sorry. For the sadness seemed to have been with him a long time,
while the joy was new.

A little while she babbled of the trouble and pain she had given them.

"You and poor dad! If only I could have yelled out in time!"

"To get a knife in you, my dear--no, it's been all just right. Why, we
should never have got the Dope of the Gods back, without you."

And when she laughed, he told her how her father had growled: "Oh, damn
the Ambrotox!" and how he had lectured the potentate on nervous
exhaustion.

But when a little silence fell between them, Amaryllis took a deep
breath and plunged, saying in a half-stifled voice, "I want to tell you
something."

"Tell away, child," he replied, smiling benignantly on her, though his
heart beat heavily, telling him her tale beforehand.

"It's--it's Dick," she said, and broke down.

"Dick?" he responded. "Of course it's Dick--and Dick it is going to be;
Dick for breakfast, Dick for lunch, and Dick for dinner."

"Yes," said