ficult for Mr.
Dyceworthy to speak. He hummed and hawed several times, and settled his
stiff collar once or twice as though it hurt him; finally he said with
an evident effort--

"I have found a--a--trinket of yours--a trifling toy--which, perhaps,
you would be glad to have again." And he drew carefully out of his
waistcoat pocket, a small parcel wrapped up in tissue paper, which he
undid with his fat fingers, thus displaying the little crucifix he had
kept so long in his possession. "Concerning this," he went on, holding
it up before her, "I am grievously troubled,--and would fain say a few
necessary words--"

She interrupted him, reaching out her hand for the cross as she spoke.

"That was my mother's crucifix," she said in solemn, infinitely tender
accents, with a mist as of unshed tears in her sweet blue eyes. "It was
round her neck when she died. I knew I had lost it, and was very unhappy
about it. I do thank you with all my heart for bringing it back to me!"

And the hauteur of her face relaxed, and her smile--that sudden sweet
smile of hers,--shone forth like a gleam of sunshine athwart a cloud.

Mr. Dyceworthy's breath came and went with curious rapidity. His visage
grew pale, and a clammy dew broke out upon his forehead. He took the
hand she held out,--a fair, soft hand with a pink palm like an upcurled
shell,--and laid the little cross within it, and still retaining his
hold of her, he stammeringly observed--

"Then we are friends, Froeken Thelma! . . . good friends, I hope?"

She withdrew her fingers quickly from his hot, moist clasp, and her
bright smile vanished.

"I do not see that at all!" she replied frigidly. "Friendship is very
rare. To be friends, one must have similar tastes and sympathies,--many
things which we have not,--and which we shall never have. I am slow to
call any person my friend."

Mr. Dyceworthy's small pursy mouth drew itself into a tight thin line.

"Except," he said, with a suave sneer, "except when 'any person' happens
to be a rich Englishman with a handsome face and easy manners! . . . then
you are not slow to make friends, Froeken,--on the contrary, you are
remarkably quick!"

The cold haughty stare with which the girl favored him might have frozen
a less conceited man to a pillar of ice.

"What do you mean?" she asks abruptly, and with an air of surprise.

The minister's little ferret-like eyes, drooped under their puny lids,
and he fidgeted on the seat with uncomf