different! I feel much more beautiful now, since you think me
pleasant to look at!"

Philip laughed and caught her hand. "What a child you are!" he said.
"Now let me see this little finger." And he loosened from his
watch-chain a half-hoop ring of brilliants. "This belonged to _my_
mother, Thelma," he continued gently, "and since her death I have always
carried it about with me. I resolved never to part with it, except to--"
He paused and slipped it on the third finger of her left hand, where it
sparkled bravely.

She gazed at it in surprise. "You part with it now?" she asked, with
wonder in her accents. "I do not understand!"

He kissed her. "No? I will explain again, Thelma!--and you shall not
laugh at me as you did the very first time I saw you! I resolved never
to part with this ring, I say, except to--my promised wife. _Now_ do you
understand?"

She blushed deeply, and her eyes dropped before his ardent gaze.

"I do thank you very much, Philip,"--she faltered timidly,--she was
about to say something further when suddenly Lorimer entered the saloon.
He glanced from Errington to Thelma, and from Thelma back again to
Errington,--and smiled. So have certain brave soldiers been known to
smile in face of a death-shot. He advanced with his usual languid step
and nonchalant air, and removing his cap, bowed gravely and courteously.

"Let me be the first to offer my congratulations to the future Lady
Errington! Phil, old man! . . . I wish you joy!"

CHAPTER XV.

"Why, sir, in the universal game of double-dealing, shall not the
cleverest tricksters play each other false by haphazard, and so
betray their closest secrets, to their own and their friends'
infinite amazement?"--CONGREVE.

When Olaf Gueldmar and his daughter left the yacht that evening,
Errington accompanied them, in order to have the satisfaction of
escorting his beautiful betrothed as far as her own door. They were all
three very silent--the _bonde_ was pensive, Thelma shy, and Errington
himself was too happy for speech. Arriving at the farmhouse, they saw
Sigurd curled up under the porch, playing idly with the trailing
rose-branches, but, on hearing their footsteps, he looked up, uttered a
wild exclamation, and fled. Gueldmar tapped his own forehead
significantly.

"He grows worse and worse, the poor lad!" he said somewhat sorrowfully.
"And yet there is a strange mingling of foresight and wit with his wild
fancies. Wouldst th