he string of his eye-glass. "It's impossible to forget _your_
face, Miss Marcia!"

She was silent,--and kept that face turned from him so long that the
gentle little lord was surprised. He approached her more closely and
took her hand--the hand that had played with the drops in the fountain.
It was such an astonishingly small hand.--so very fragile-looking and
tiny, that he was almost for putting up his eye-glass to survey it, as
if it were a separate object in a museum. But the faintest pressure of
the delicate fingers he held startled him, and sent the most curious
thrill through his body--and when he spoke he was in such a flutter that
he scarcely knew what he was saying.

"Miss--Miss Marcia!" he stammered, "have--have I said--anything to--to
offend you?"

Very slowly, and with seeming reluctance, she turned her head towards
him, and--oh, thou mischievous Puck, that sometimes takest upon thee the
semblance of Eros, what skill is thine! . . . there were tears in her
eyes--real tears--bright, large tears that welled up and fell through
her long lashes in the most beautiful, touching, and becoming manner!
"And," thought Marcia to herself, "if I don't fetch him now, I never
will!" Lord Algy was quite frightened--his poor brain grew more and more
bewildered.

"Why--Miss Marcia! I say! Look here!" he mumbled in his extremity,
squeezing her little hand tighter and tighter. "What--what _have_ I
done! Good gracious! You--you really mustn't cry, you know--I say--look
here! Marcia! I wouldn't vex you for the world!"

"Yew bet yew wouldn't!" said Marcia, with slow and nasal plaintiveness.
"I like that! That's the way yew English talk. But yew kin hang round a
girl a whole season and make all her folks think badly of
her--and--and--break her heart--yes--that's so!" Here she dried her eyes
with a filmy lace handkerchief. "But don't _yew_ mind me! I kin bear it.
I kin worry through!" And she drew herself up with dignified
resignation--while Lord Algy stared wildly at her, his feeble mind in a
whirl. Presently she smiled most seductively, and looked up with her
dark, tear-wet eyes to the moon.

"I guess it's a good night for lovers!" she said, sinking her ordinary
tone to an almost sweet cadence. "But we're not of that sort, are we?"

The die was cast! She looked so charming--so irresistible, that
Masherville lost all hold over his wits. Scarcely knowing what he did,
he put his arm round her waist. Oh, what a warm, yielding