"He's twice her age, and she _thinks_ she likes him. Girls get romantic streaks, and Dabney's the kind they put up on a pedestal, but he isn't any more suited to her than--a bunch of beets----" "I suppose not," was all the response I dared venture in the face of such an outpouring of eloquence. "They are coming now," he said, and through the window I saw them--Elizabeth, looking like a little girl in her three-cornered hat, with her hair tied with a broad black ribbon, and Charlemagne sitting his horse like a centaur. The Westerner deserted me at once, and, the rest of the guests following, I was left alone in the library. I curled up in the window-seat, drew the curtains to shield me from the gaze of those who might step within, and tried to take forty winks to make up for the four hundred I had missed the night before. But I couldn't sleep. Elizabeth and Anne--Anne and Elizabeth! I couldn't get their affairs out of my mind. Would Elizabeth propose, would Anne, would Charlemagne, would the multi-millionaire? Again and again I tried to fit together their widely different theories, until in despair I wished that Charlemagne and his leap-year week-end had not tempted me from my maidenly apartment in town, where the worries of lovers were confined to my manuscripts. And even as I pondered, I heard Elizabeth's voice saying, as she came in from the porch, "I suppose you think I am awfully forward to make you spend all your morning with me----" As he followed her into the library, Charlemagne laughed. "I might feel flattered," he said, "if I didn't know you were doing it to make McChesney furious." McChesney was the multi-millionaire. "McChesney?" Elizabeth's tone was startled. "Don't hedge," Charlemagne teased. "He's bound to win out, Elizabeth. No woman can escape a man when he goes for her like that. You might as well give in." "I shall never give in." "He's a nice fellow." "He's not my ideal----" there was a pathetic note of appeal in her young voice. "Ah--ideals----" Charlemagne had dropped his banter. "Don't spoil your happiness looking for the ideal man--he's like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow--something we hear of, but have never seen." There was a heavy silence. Then Elizabeth said, catching her breath, "But--but I have found my ideal, Mr. Dabney." "You have? And it's not McChesney?" I peeped at them through the curtain. They were in big wicker chairs in front of the door that led to the porch. Elizabeth had taken off her coat, showing her thin white blouse with its crisp frills. Her cheeks were as pink as the rose which she picked to pieces with nervous fingers. "No," she said tremulously, "it's--it's not Mr. McChesney." I held my breath. Would she dare? "It's--it's a man much older than I am," she went on, "and--and I don't know that he has ever thought of me--in that way--perhaps if he had, he might like me--a little----"