“My name wouldn’t mean anything to you—not yet. You wouldn’t know it.” “What!” She drew back. “But we have met,” he reassured her hurriedly. “I felt we must have, but where was it?” “I can’t quite remember, either. It may have been when you were Queen in Babylon and I was a Christian slave.” She drew nearer with lit face. “Oh, do you believe in all those delightful things?” “I believe—” he began on a different and lower note and then he stopped suddenly. Bella’s upturned face silently begged him to go on with his profession of faith. But just then, Bella’s brother, having passed a boring guest on to his wife, came between the two who stood so oblivious of the rest of the company. The apparition of Tom Wayne brought Bella back to the every-day world, and to a half-frightened self-criticism, in view of the long flight she had taken from it in the last few seconds. Her brother laid an affectionate hand on the shoulder of the sunburnt man, and said, laughing, to Bella: “You must be careful with this person. He’s the most desperate flirt.” Bella winced inwardly, but she disguised the little hurt with smiling mockery. “Really! I should _never_ have thought it!” “Oh, yes, goes off with first one heart and then another. And he goes so far! That’s the worst of him.” “Where does he go?” “Lord knows! Let’s see, what God-forgotten place was the last book about?” “Oh, you write books? Then you _are_ distinguished—” “You aren’t telling me you didn’t know who it was?” exclaimed her brother. “Well, I thought I did, and I’ve been behaving as if I did.” There was a general movement to the dining-room, but Tom paused long enough to say with mock formality: “Miss Wayne, Mr. John Galbraith.” “_Oh!_” ejaculated the girl, growing pink with excitement. “Are you Hildegarde’s Jack?” The sunburnt man looked mystified a moment, and then with sudden daring, “Is your name Hildegarde?” he said. This was on the twenty-fourth of September. Six days later she began a letter to her friend. “Oh, Hildegarde! Hildegarde! You’re quite right. He’s the most wonderful person in the world, and I hope you don’t mind, but we are engaged to be married—Jack Galbraith and I! It turns out that he’s an old friend of Marion’s family, and after she married my brother, when Jack came to see them last winter, Tom liked him awfully—of course everybody does that—and since then they’ve all three been great friends.