Margaret, who sat in a deep chair with her arms laid along its padded sides, and her hands lightly clasping the rounded ends, her long silk gown falling away to the left, while her figure was slightly turned toward her cousin at her right, fixed her eyes upon the points of her little slippers, crossed before her, and remained profoundly still. For a moment the young man looked at her in silence, and then he said: “Why are you so quiet, dear Daisy?” “I am unwilling to alter the pose that has won your approbation,” she said demurely. “Don’t you think if I retained it long enough I might ‘be struck so,’ as the man in _Patience_ says?” “I should be inclined to discourage that idea,” said Alan, “as I was about to ask you to draw your seat a little nearer, and transfer your hands from the chair’s arms to my head. You know I always liked you to run your long fingers through and through my hair. Have you forgotten how you used to do it? I can assure you I have not.” As Margaret made no answer, he went on: “You were quite a child when you used first to do it--a tall little maid, even then, with such imperious ways! But you were always willing to do anything for your big boy cousin, and he has never forgotten you. All the time he was at college, and afterward, when he went abroad and travelled about in many strange and distant places, he carried with him always the image of that little maid, and when, at last, he turned homeward, one of his pleasantest visions was that of meeting her again.” Margaret had changed her position and turned more directly toward him; she was looking straight into his eyes, with her direct and candid gaze, which his own met rather dreamily. She did not speak in answer to these fond assurances of his, but as she listened she smiled. “And are you glad to hear that I have always had this _tendre_ for my sweet cousin, which I somehow can’t get over, even yet?” “Oh yes,” said Margaret, gently, “very glad,” and she looked at him with a deep and searching gaze, which he could not quite understand. “Come nearer, dear,” he said, “and take your old place at my head, and try to twist my short locks into curls, as you used to do. You will discover a secret known only to myself and the discreet fraternity of barbers. Come and see!” and he extended a white hand, somewhat languidly, to draw her toward him. “I think not,” said Margaret, drawing herself upright, into an attitude of buoyant self-possession. “You and the barbers may keep your secret, for the present. I won’t intrude.” “Ah, but I want you. Come!” he said urgently, still holding out the delicate hand, on which a diamond sparkled. But Margaret shook her head.