“Yes--I know he's out; I met him on his way to the club. Hurry now--I've got the best news in the world for you.” “Yes--in a minute.” He knew her minutes, and how long they could be, and in his impatience roamed about the wide hall examining the old English engravings and colored prints decorating the panels until he heard her step overhead and looking up watched her cross the upper hall, her well-poised, aristocratic head high in air, her full, well-rounded, blossoming body imaged in the loose embroidered scarf wound about her sloping shoulders. Soon he caught the wealth of her blue-black hair in whose folds her negro mammy had pinned a rose that matched the brilliancy of her cheeks, two stray curls wandering over her neck; her broad forehead, with clearly marked eyebrows, arching black lashes shading lustrous, slumbering eyes; and as she drew nearer, her warm red lips, exquisite teeth, and delicate chin, and last, the little feet that played hide and seek beneath her quilted petticoat: a tall, dark, full-blooded, handsome girl of eighteen with an air of command and distinction tempered by a certain sweet dignity and delicious coquetry--a woman to be loved even when she ruled and to be reverenced even when she trifled. She had reached the floor now, and the two arm in arm, he patting her hand, she laughing beside him, had entered the small library followed by the old butler bringing another big candelabra newly lighted. “It's so good of you to come,” she cried, her face alight with the joy of seeing him--“and you look so happy and well--your trip down the bay has done you a world of good. Ben says the ducks you sent father are the best we have had this winter. Now tell me, dear Uncle George”--she had him in one of the deep arm-chairs by this time, with a cushion behind his shoulders--“I am dying to hear all about it.” “Don't you 'dear Uncle George' me until you've heard what I've got to say.” “But you said you had the best news in the world for me,” she laughed, looking at him from under her lashes. “So I have.” “What is it?” “Harry.” The girl's face clouded and her lips quivered. Then she sat bolt upright. “I won't hear a word about him. He's broken his promise to me and I will never trust him again. If I thought you'd come to talk about Harry, I wouldn't have come down.” St. George lay back in his chair, shrugged his shoulders, stole a look at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows, and said with an assumed dignity, a smile playing about his lips: “All right, off goes his head--exit the scoundrel. Much as I could do to keep him out of Jones Falls this morning, but of course now it's all over we can let Spitfire break his neck. That's the way a gentleman should die of love--and not be fished out of a dirty stream with his clothes all bespattered with mud.”