“Tavia! Horrors! Don’t!” begged Dorothy. “Don’t like my metaphor, dear?” chuckled Tavia. But she was grim again in a moment, continuing: “No use dodging the fact, I repeat. You were interested in that man from the beginning. Now, weren’t you?” “Ye—es, Tavia,” admitted her friend. “And I should have seen that you were. I ought to have known, when you were put out with him because of that shopgirl, that for that very reason you were more interested in Garry Knapp than in any other fellow who ever shined up to you——” “Tavia! How can you?” “Huh! Just as e-asy,” responded her friend, with a wicked twinkle in her eye and mimicking Garry Knapp’s manner of speaking. “Now, listen!” she hurried on. “That night I took dinner with him alone—the evening you had the—er—headache and went to bed. ’Member?” “Oh, yes,” sighed Dorothy, nodding. “He just pumped me about you,” said Tavia. “And I was just foolish enough to tell him all about your money—how rich your folks were and all that.” “Oh!” and Dorothy flushed again. “You don’t get it—not yet,” said Tavia, wagging her head. “Afterwards I remembered how funny he looked when I had told him that you were a regular ‘sure-enough’ heiress, and I remembered some things he said, too.” “What do you mean?” asked Dorothy, faintly. “Why, I scared him away from you,” blurted out Tavia, almost in tears when she thought of what she called her “ivory-headedness.” “I know that he was just as deeply smitten with you, dear, as—as—well, as ever a man could be! But he’s poor—and he’s game. I think that is why he went off in such a hurry and without trying _very_ hard to see you again.” “Oh, Tavia! Do you believe that is so?” and the joy in Dorothy’s voice could not be mistaken. “Well!” exclaimed Tavia, “isn’t that pretty bad? You act as though you were pleased.” Dorothy blushed again, but she was brave. She gazed straight into Tavia’s eyes as she said: “I am pleased, dear. I am pleased to learn that possibly it was not his lack of interest in poor little me that sent him away from New York so hastily—at least, without making a more desperate effort to see me.” “Oh, Doro!” cried Tavia, suddenly putting both arms around her friend. “Do you actually mean it?” “Mean what?” “That you l-l-_like_ him so much?” Dorothy laughed aloud, but nodded emphatically. “I l-l-_like_ him just as much as that,” she mocked. “And if it’s only my father’s money in the way——” “And your own. You really will be rich when you are twenty-one,” Tavia reminded her. “I tell you, that young man was troubled a heap when he learned from me that you were so well off. If you had been a poor girl—if you had been _me_, for instance—he would never have left New York City without knowing his fate. I could see it in his eyes.” “Oh, Tavia!” gasped Dorothy, with clasped hands and shining eyes.