"In western Canada. When we were travelling we often met nice girls, and my father always took me to see them if he could. Once we met an English girl on a Cunard steamer. She was going to visit her brother, who had a ranch in Manitoba. I liked her ever so much, and the next year, after we had been doing the Rocky Mountains, my father took me to the nearest town to the ranch. This girl and her brother used to drive into town,--oh, such queer sights they would be, for if they couldn't get horses they took mules. The people used to come in from all the country round about, particularly if there were dances at the hotel. Among them was a handsome New Yorker who was visiting a cousin. They called him Lucifer, or the son of the morning, from a little play they acted. How stunning he used to look, Justin, driving in with his cousin's tandem, or else riding on horseback! He had a friend with him called Mr. Denham, and finally they came to stay at our hotel. I was too young to go to the dances, but Mr. Huntington often talked to me, and I simply adored him. But one day my father suddenly said we must leave. I don't think he liked Mr. Huntington, but I am not sure. You know he never talks much." "Yes, I know," said Justin, absently stroking her hair. "The girls were crazy about Mr. Huntington,--simply crazy. You know there are some men that women just rave about." "And some uninteresting ones like myself that they don't care a fig about." "No, not uninteresting," said Derrice, sweetly. "Undemonstrative, then?" "Yes." He smiled, and turned his head away. "Tell me why you were in such a hurry to marry me?" she whispered in his averted ear, "and why my father seconded you?" Justin promptly kissed her teasing mouth. "Let me go," she said, laughingly, "I don't like you when you are silly." He smiled and detained her. "I must be silly long enough to tell you that it grieves me to know that my wife can look with envy upon people who are apparently happy, and say to herself, 'I am alone in the world, no one loves me.' Will you try to remember that you are the centre of attraction in this whole universe for me, and also for your father? Our hearts are bound up in you, dolly." "Are they," she murmured, and putting up one plump hand she gently caressed his cheek. He coloured vividly, and put her out of his arms. "Run away now, darling,--and go softly past my mother's door. This is an extravagantly late hour to her." She seemed reluctant to leave him. "Justin," she said, hanging about the threshold of the door, "I know I am not satisfactory as a wife, but I will try to do better,--I am not very old yet." Without answering her he remained standing on the hearth-rug. "And I like you better than I did," she said, shyly; "perhaps, when I get quite wise, you will tell me all your secrets?" "Perhaps," he said, calmly.