No wonder that Arkwright, noting the sparkle in her eye, the agitation in her manner, and the embarrassed red in her cheek, took new courage. For so long had this girl held him at the end of a major third or a diminished seventh; for so long had she blithely accepted his every word and act as devotion to music, not herself--for so long had she done all this that he had come to fear that never would she do anything else. No wonder then, that now, in the soft radiance of the strange, new light on her face, his own face glowed ardently, and that he leaned forward with an impetuous rush of eager words. “But there is time, Miss Billy--if you'd give me leave--to say--” “I'm afraid I kept you waiting,” interrupted the hurried voice of Alice Greggory from the hall doorway. “I was asleep, I think, when a clock somewhere, striking eleven--Why, Mr.--Arkwright!” Not until Alice Greggory had nearly crossed the room did she see that the man standing by her hostess was--not the tenor she had expected to find--but an old acquaintance. Then it was that the tremulous “Mr.-Arkwright!” fell from her lips. Billy and Arkwright had turned at her first words. At her last, Arkwright, with a half-despairing, half-reproachful glance at Billy, stepped forward. “Miss Greggory!--you _are_ Miss Alice Greggory, I am sure,” he said pleasantly. At the first opportunity Billy murmured a hasty excuse and left the room. To Aunt Hannah she flew with a woebegone face. “Oh, Aunt Hannah, Aunt Hannah,” she wailed, half laughing, half crying; “that wretched little fib-teller of a clock of yours spoiled it all!” “Spoiled it! Spoiled what, child?” “My first meeting between Mary Jane and Miss Greggory. I had it all arranged that they were to have it _alone_; but that miserable little fibber up-stairs struck eleven at half-past ten, and Miss Greggory heard it and thought she was fifteen minutes late. So down she hurried, half awake, and spoiled all my plans. Now she's sitting in there with him, in chairs the length of the room apart, discussing the snowstorm last night or the moonrise this morning--or some other such silly thing. And I had it so beautifully planned!” “Well, well, dear, I'm sorry, I'm sure,” smiled Aunt Hannah; “but I can't think any real harm is done. Did Mary Jane have anything to tell her--about her father, I mean?” Only the faintest flicker of Billy's eyelid testified that the everyday accustomedness of that “Mary Jane” on Aunt Hannah's lips had not escaped her.