Now it is possible to shake hands with hundreds and thousands of people, and find it a perfectly uninteresting operation; it may even be a painful one if you happen to be President of the Republic or the hero of the passing hour. But now and then someone comes along whose hand seems to fit, perhaps too fatally well, and that is different. And so when Betty Graeme slid her slim white hand into mine I knew instantly that it belonged there, always had belonged, and always would. An interesting fact, this, in the natural history of selection, but it has to be recognized by both parties to the transaction before it can be set down as an absolute and accepted truth. It suddenly occurred to me that my Cousin Betty was entirely too frank and cousinly in her behavior to justify any jumping at conclusions. I was naturally exhilarated by the astonishing change in my material fortunes, while she was in sorrow, a sorrow whose full realization still lay before her. I must be patient and wait. Wherefore I returned my Cousin Betty's parting word in kind, and followed Marcus to the red room, where, left alone, I resorted to the childish trick of pinching myself; could this really be I? Chapter IV _Some Hypothetical Questions_ Dinner was not a particularly cheerful meal. I had to take the head of the table, and therefore sat in the chair so lately vacated by my Cousin Francis Graeme. Really I should have preferred a decent delay in the matter, but old Effingham, the family butler for two generations past, would have it so, and any protest would have been both futile and unseemly.