'Yes. However, I thought I'd try the Continent first, for I knew you must be somewhere thereabouts, and I couldn't go back to America without you in any case. So I crossed over to Paris, and began beating up the ground carefully. By-and-by I came across some obscure intelligence about you; but not a word could I hear about Miss Gwendolen. I'm pretty well convinced, now, that she is this moment on my plantation in Maryland.' 'What a pity! I should like to have seen her, too.' 'Oh, I mean you shall some day, Tom; I'm told she's good-looking, though I can't speak to that on my own knowledge; in fact, if she is, she must be very much changed from the scrawny, freckled little fidget she used to be seven years ago. However, she's out of the question just at present. But....' 'You've accounted for yourself as a friend and a brother; now for the other thing--the "humph"?' 'You know, Tom,' said Floyd after some hesitation, knocking the ash from his cigar with the remains of the heliotrope blossom--'you know I never was like some fellows--susceptible--always falling in love, and all that sort of thing--eh?' I could not help grinning at this exordium. Floyd, so long as my acquaintance with him had lasted, had been without exception the most fickle and incorrigible flirt I ever saw. He was always in and out of love, and his longest attachment seldom lasted six weeks. The effrontery with which he now recommended himself to my admiration as a model of continence in this respect was too much for even my gravity. 'I've known very few fellows like you, at all events,' was my non-committal reply; 'and from what I do know, I should think it very probable your time might have come, at last.' 'Well--only this is no laughing matter, mind you, Tom,' said Floyd, turning round upon me with a countenance of extreme solemnity--'it's very natural you shouldn't quite understand how a man like myself feels when his heart is really touched for the first time; you've always been out of the way of such things, you know--you never took to women. But my whole soul is in this affair; it's a matter of life and death, I might say----' At this point I could restrain myself no longer, but laughed openly. Floyd was so categorically reproducing the old Floyd of college days, who was wont to rave precisely thus about each latest mistress of his fancy, that the depths of mirth were stirred within me. He was a good deal annoyed at first; but finally the corners of his moustache began to twitch, and his imperturbable good nature to reassert itself. 'I am in earnest, though, this time,' he persisted, when gravity was restored. 'You know, we're not boys any longer, Tom. You must allow a man to have one serious feeling before he dies.' 'So I do, Floyd; it was only the old associations that tickled me; and also another thing, that will surprise you when you hear it. But first--go on with your yarn. Who and what is she?' 'I haven't an idea!' 'You don't know?'