“What of that, when in the end I’ll win.” He looked over at her with a bright gleam in his eyes. “I wouldn’t be too sure,” she warned demurely. “You may lose on a technicality.” He drew his chair a little nearer to her side and turned over the pages of a book lying on her work-table. On the fly-leaf was inscribed in a man’s writing: “To the dear little woman whose friendship is worth a fortune.” Another book beside it bore the inscription: “With the love of all the firm, including the boys,” and a volume of poems above it was dedicated to the young person “with the high regards and stanch affection” of some other masculine person. Will Carman pushed aside these evidences of his sweetheart’s popularity with his own kind and leaned across the table. “Alice,” said he, “once upon a time you admitted that you loved me.” A blush suffused the young person’s countenance. “Did I?” she queried. “You did, indeed.” “Well?” “Well! If you love me and I love you—” “Oh, please!” protested the girl, covering her ears with her hands. “I _will_ please,” asserted the young man. “I have come here tonight, Alice, to ask you to marry me—and at once.” “Deary me!” exclaimed the young person; but she let her needlework fall into her lap as her lover, approaching nearer, laid his arm around her shoulders and, bending his face close to hers, pleaded his most important case. If for a moment the small mouth quivered, the firm little chin lost its firmness, and the proud little head yielded to the pressure of a lover’s arm, it was only for a moment so brief and fleeting that Will Carman had hardly become aware of it before it had passed. “No,” said the young person sorrowfully but decidedly. She had arisen and was standing on the other side of the table facing him. “I cannot marry you while your mother regards me as beneath you.” “When she, knows you she will acknowledge you are above me. But I am not asking you to come to my mother, I am asking you to come to me, dear. If you will put your hand in mine and trust to me through all the coming years, no man or woman born can come between us.” But the young person shook her head. “No,” she repeated. “I will not be your wife unless your mother welcomes me with pride and with pleasure.” The night air was still sweet with the perfume of roses as Will Carman passed out of the little cottage door; but he drew in no deep breath of inspiration. His impetuous Irish heart was too heavy with disappointment. It might have been a little lighter, however, had he known that the eyes of the young person who gazed after him were misty with a love and yearning beyond expression. III “Will Carman has failed to snare his bird,” said Mr. Spring Fragrance to Mrs. Spring Fragrance. Their neighbor’s son had just passed their veranda without turning to bestow upon them his usual cheerful greeting.