up to meet me in the most natural manner in the world, and, obviously, with a prepared form of words.
"How do you do, Mr. Ducie?" she said. "It is quite an age since I have seen you!"
"I have much to tell you. Miss Gilchrist," I replied. "May I sit down?"
For the artful girl, by sitting near the door, and the judicious use of her shawl, had contrived to keep a chair empty by her side.
She made room for me, as a matter of course, and the youths had the discretion to melt before us. As soon as I was once seated her fan flew out, and she whispered behind it:
"Are you mad?"
"Madly in love," I replied; "but in no other sense."
"I have no patience! You cannot understand what I am suffering!" she said. "What are you to say to Ronald, to Major Chevenix, to my aunt?"
"Your aunt?" I cried, with a start. "Peccavi! is she here?"
"She is in the card-room at whist," said Flora.
"Where she will probably stay all the evening?" I suggested.
"She may," she admitted; "she generally does!"
"Well, then, I must avoid the card-room," said I, "which is very much what I had counted upon doing. I did not come here to play cards, but to contemplate a certain young lady to my heart's content—if it can ever be contented!—and to tell her some good news."
"But there are still Ronald and the Major!" she persisted. "They are not card-room fixtures! Ronald will be coming and going. And as for Mr. Chevenix, he"
"Always sits with Miss Flora?" I interrupted. "And they talk of poor St. Ives? I had gathered as much, my
