“That,” said Marguerite, her frown vanishing and a smile taking its place—“that is for the present my secret. I’ll tell you some day, but not until I have baffled Mr. Harley in his ill-advised purpose of marrying me off to a man I don’t want, and wouldn’t have under any circumstances. Even if I had caught the _New York_ the other day his plans would have miscarried. I’d never have married that Osborne man; I’d have snubbed Balderstone the moment he spoke to me; and if Stuart Harley had got a book out of my trip to Europe at all, it would have been a series of papers on some such topic as ‘The Spinster Abroad, or How to be Happy though Single.’ No more shall I take the part he intends me to in this Newport romance, unless he removes Count Bonetti from the scene entirely, and provides me with a different style of hero from his Professor, the original of whom, by-the-way, as I happen to know, is already married and has two children. I went to school with his wife, and I know just how much of a hero he is.” And so they went to Newport, and Harley’s novel opened swimmingly. His description of the yacht was perfect; his narration of the incidents of the embarkation could not be improved upon in any way. They were absolutely true to the life. But his account of what Marguerite Andrews said and did and thought while on the Willards’ yacht was not realism at all—it was imagination of the wildest kind, for she said, did, and thought nothing of the sort. Harley did his best, but his heroine was obdurate, and the poor fellow did not know that he was writing untruths, for he verily believed that he heard and saw all that he attributed to her exactly as he put it down. So the story began well, and Harley for a time was quite happy. At the end of a week, however, he had a fearful set-back. Count Bonetti was ready to be presented to Marguerite according to the plan, but there the schedule broke down. Harley’s heroine took a new and entirely unexpected tack. IV A CHAPTER FROM HARLEY, WITH NOTES “_Good-bye_, _proud world_, _I’m going home_. _Thou art not my friend_, _and I’m not thine_.” —EMERSON. I THINK the reader will possibly gain a better idea of what happened at the Howlett dance, at which Count Bonetti was to have been presented to Miss Andrews, if I forego the pleasure of writing this chapter myself, and produce instead the chapter of Stuart Harley’s ill-fated book which was to have dealt with that most interesting incident. Having relinquished all hope of ever getting that particular story into shape without a change of heroine, and being unwilling to go to that extreme, Mr. Harley has very kindly placed his manuscript at my disposal.