e use of wasting time? I told her
you'd like a wife for a Christmas gift very much, if she was the wife.
Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you really and truly rather have her than
anything else?"

Van Landing turned and looked out of the window. The child's eyes and
earnest, eager face could not be met in the surge of hot blood which
swept over him, and his throat grew tight. All his theories and ideas
were becoming but confused upheaval in the manipulations of fate, or
what you will, that were bringing strange things to pass, and he no
longer could think clearly or feel calmly. He must get away before he
saw Frances.

"Wouldn't you, Mr. Van?"

In the voice beside him was shy entreaty and appeal, and, hands
clasped behind her, Carmencita waited.

"I would." Van Landing made effort to smile, but in his eyes was no
smiling. Into them had come sudden purpose. "I shall ask her to marry
me to-morrow."

Arms extended to the limit of their length, Carmencita whirled round
and round the room, then, breathless, stopped and, taking Van
Landing's hand, lifted it to her lips.

"I kiss your hand, my lord, and bring you greetings from your faithful
subjects! I read that in a book. I'll be the subject. Isn't it grand
and magnificent and glorious?" She stopped. "She hasn't any new
clothes. A lady can't get married without new clothes, can she? And
she won't have time to get any on Christmas eve. Whether she'll do it
or not, you'll have to make her, Mr. Van, or you'll lose her again.
You've--got--to--just--make--her!"

Carmencita's long slender forefinger made a jab in Van Landing's
direction, and her head nodded with each word uttered. But before he
could answer, Mother McNeil, with breakfast on a tray, was in the room
and Carmencita was out.

Sitting down beside him, as he asked her to do, Van Landing told her
how it happened he was there, told her who he was. Miss Barbour was
under her care. She had once been his promised wife. He was trying to
find her when he fell, or fainted, or whatever it was, that he might
ask her again to marry him. Would she help him?

In puzzled uncertainty Mother McNeil had listened, fine little folds
wrinkling her usually smooth forehead, and her keen eyes searching the
face before her; then she got up.

"I might have known it would end like this. Well, why not?" Hands on
her hips, she smiled in the flushed face looking into hers. Van
Landing had risen, and his hands, holding the back of his chair,
tw