father; I thought of my
c-c-country. I didn't want to live with him in Scotland, I knew that I
couldn't live without him in America, and there I was! I didn't think
I was s-suited to a minister, and I am not; but oh! this p-particular
minister is so s-suited to me!" and she threw herself on the sofa and
buried her head in the cushions.

She was so absurd even in her grief that I had hard work to keep from
smiling.

"Let us talk about the lions," I said soothingly. "But when did the
trouble begin? When did he speak to you?"

"After the tableaux last night; but of course there had been
other--other--times--and things."

"Of course. Well?"

"He had told me a week before that he should go away for a while, that
it made him too wretched to stay here just now; and I suppose that was
when he got the silver wand ready for me. It was meant for the Jean of
the poem, you know. Of course he would not put my own name on a gift
like that."

"You don't think he had it made for Jean Dalziel in the first place?"
I asked this, thinking she needed some sort of tonic in her relaxed
condition.

"You know him better than that, Penelope! I am ashamed of you! We had
read Hynde Horn together ages before Jean Dalziel came; but I imagine,
when we came to acting the lines, he thought it would be better to
have some other king's daughter; that is, that it would be less
personal. And I never, never would have been in the tableau, if I had
dared refuse Lady Ardmore, or could have explained; but I had no time
to think. And then, naturally, he thought by my being there as the
king's daughter that--that--the lions were slain, you know; instead of
which they were roaring so that I could hardly hear the orchestra."

"Francesca, look me in the eye! Do--you--love him?"

"Love him? I adore him!" she exclaimed in good clear decisive English,
as she rose impetuously and paced up and down in front of the sofa.
"But in the first place there is the difference in nationality."

"I have no patience with you. One would think he was a Turk, an
Esquimau, or a cannibal. He is white, he speaks English, and he
believes in the Christian religion. The idea of calling such a man a
foreigner!"

"Oh, it didn't prevent me from loving him," she confessed, "but I
thought at first it would be unpatriotic to marry him."

"Did you think Columbia could not spare you even as a rare specimen to
be used for exhibition purposes?" I asked wickedly.

"You know I am not s