But Ridgway’s wary eyes, appraising her mood as she came forward to meet him, read none of this doubt in her frank greeting. Anything more sure and exquisite than the cultivation Virginia Balfour breathed he would have been hard put to it to conceive. That her gown and its accessories seemed to him merely the extension of a dainty personality was the highest compliment he could pay her charm, and an entirely unconscious one. “Have I kept you waiting?” she smiled, giving him her hand. His answering smile, quite cool and unperturbed, gave the lie to his words. “For a year, though the almanac called it a week.” “You must have suffered,” she told him ironically, with a glance at the clear color in his good-looking face. “Repressed emotion,” he explained. “May I hope that my suffering has reached a period?” They had been sauntering toward a little conservatory at the end of the large room, but she deflected and brought up at a table on which lay some books. One of these she picked up and looked at incuriously for a moment before sweeping them aside. She rested her hands on the table behind her and leaned back against it, her eyes meeting his fairly. “You’re still of the same mind, are you?” she demanded. “Oh! very much.” She lifted herself to the table, crossing her feet and dangling them irresponsibly. “We might as well be comfy while we talk;” and she indicated, by a nod, a chair. “Thanks. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll take it standing.” She did not seem in any hurry to begin, and Ridgway gave evidence of no desire to hasten her. But presently he said, with a little laugh that seemed to offer her inclusion in the joke: “I’m on the anxious seat, you know—waiting to find out whether I’m to be the happiest man alive.” “You know as much about it as I do.” She echoed his laugh ruefully. “I’m still as much at sea as I was last week. I couldn’t tell then, and I can’t now.” “No news is good news, they say.” “I don’t want to marry you a bit, but you’re a great catch, as you are very well aware.” “I suppose I am rather a catch,” he agreed, the shadow of a smile at the corners of his mouth. “It isn’t only your money; though, of course, that’s a temptation,” she admitted audaciously. “I’m glad it’s not only my money.” He could laugh with her about it because he was shrewd enough to understand that it was not at all his wealth. Her cool frankness might have frightened away another man. It merely served to interest Ridgway. For, with all his strength, he was a vain man, always ready to talk of himself. He spent a good deal of his spare time interpreting himself to attractive and attracted young women.