o say 'sentiments.' I'm
sorry I said anything. Go to the deuce!"

Selwyn did not even deign to glance around at him. "You big red-pepper
box," he muttered affectionately, "you'll wake up Drina. Look at her in
her cunning pajamas! Oh, but she is a darling, Austin. And look at that
boy with his two white bears! He's a corker! He's a wonder--honestly,
Austin. As for that Josephine kid she can have me on demand; I'll answer
to voice, whistle, or hand. . . . I say, ought we to go away and leave
Winthrop's thumb in his mouth?"

"I guess I can get it out without waking him," whispered Gerard. A
moment later he accomplished the office, leaned down and drew the
bed-covers closer to Tina's dimpled chin, then grasped Selwyn above the
elbow in sudden alarm: "If that trained terror, Miss Paisely, finds us
in here when she comes from dinner, we'll both catch it! Come on; I'll
turn off the light. Anyway, we ought to have been dressed long ago; but
you insisted on butting in here."

In the hallway below they encountered a radiant and bewildering vision
awaiting them: Eileen, in all her glory.

"Wonderful!" said Gerard, patting the vision's rounded bare arm as he
hurried past--"fine gown! fine girl!--but I've got to dress and so has
Philip--" He meant well.

"_Do_ you like it, Captain Selwyn?" asked the girl, turning to confront
him, where he had halted. "Gerald isn't coming and--I thought perhaps
you'd be interested--"

The formal, half-patronising compliment on his tongue's tip remained
there, unsaid. He stood silent, touched by the faint under-ringing
wistfulness in the laughing voice that challenged his opinion; and
something within him responded in time:

"Your gown is a beauty; such wonderful lace. Of course, anybody would
know it came straight from Paris or from some other celestial region--"

"But it didn't!" cried the girl, delighted. "It looks it, doesn't it?
But it was made by Letellier! Is there anything you don't like about it,
Captain Selwyn? _Anything_?"

"Nothing," he said solemnly; "it is as adorable as the girl inside it,
who makes it look like a Parisian importation from Paradise!"

She colored enchantingly, and with pretty, frank impulse held out both
her hands to him:

"You _are_ a dear, Captain Selwyn! It is my first real dinner gown and
I'm quite mad about it; and--somehow I wanted the family to share my
madness with me. Nina will--she gave it to me, the darling. Austin
admires it, too, of course, bu