[Illustration: "The colonel puffed his cigar in smiling silence."] "She’ll be all right to take about town, eh, Jake?" he said. Mr. Rivett said nothing. "Now, there’s old Parke Ellingford," continued the colonel; "he’s never had as good looking a girl, and, b’gad! I’ve seen ’em all—known most of ’em," he added with a leer. "And take any of the men you and I know—Wallowby, Dankland, and that hatchet-faced Van Wyne! They’ve never had any better-looking girl than that little Diana." Mr. Rivett said nothing. "B’gad!" said the colonel, with a laugh that approached the falsetto, "if she doesn’t cut a dash in town’ this winter, I miss my guess." "Oh—are you to be in town?" inquired Mr. Rivett. "I? No; Palm Beach," said the colonel hastily, watching the other out of his pale and protruding eyes. "And then—_I_ don’t go in for such capers," he explained with a pained expression. "What a man jokes about, he never bothers with." "_I’ve_ joked many a man out of half a million," observed Rivett grimly. "That’s different.... I’m a settled citizen." He looked cautiously at Rivett, hesitated, then said carelessly: "I mean to marry, some day." "Do you?" "I do, certainly.... And I flatter myself that the woman I marry will receive her equivalent, sir." "Her moral equivalent?" "Certainly. Perhaps not her—ah—financial equivalent." He looked up at Rivett to see how he took it. Rivett neither took it nor rejected it, apparently, and the colonel probed further. "I expect to wait a year or two——" "Aren’t you getting on, Follis?" "No, sir, I am _not_ getting on!" said the colonel shortly. "I am forty-five. No man is fit to marry before he’s forty-seven, in my opinion. At that age he’s able to treat his wife intelligently. Intelligence is what a young girl most deeply appreciates in a man." "A—_young_ girl?" "I prefer a youthful wife. Youth is susceptible of being moulded. I propose to make a perfect specimen of womanhood out of whatever charming and adolescent material fortune bestows upon me." The colonel slightly lifted his eyes until they protruded toward the ceiling. "I shall consider my wife as a sacred trust, a soul for which I am responsible." "Very good idea," said Rivett without the slightest trace of expression on his face. "Why not marry the little Diana—and mould her into the ideal?" "_Marry_ her!" blurted out Curmew. "What! Marry a hired—a paid—employee!" His countenance became crimson and congested, and his eyes popped and popped. Rivett rose. "My wife worked in her uncle’s kitchen when I married her," he said indifferently, and walked out. On the stairway he joined Diana, also descending. "Well," he said, looking at her through his round glasses, "you _look_ happy enough." "I am, thank you," said the girl, smiling. "Don’t thank me for it," he said dryly.