“Oh, I BEG your pardon,” she exclaimed in delicate anguish. “I'm afraid you don't know who I am. Perhaps Mr. Palford forgot to mention me. Indeed, why should he mention me? There were so many more important things. I am a sort of distant--VERY distant relation of yours. My name is Alicia Temple Barholm.” Tembarom was relieved. But she actually hadn't made a move toward the knitting-bag. She seemed afraid to do it until he gave her permission. He walked over to the corner table and brought it to her, smiling broadly. “Here it is,” he said. “I'm glad you left it. I'm very happy to be acquainted with you, Miss Alicia.” He was glad just to see her looking up at him with her timid, refined, intensely feminine appeal. Why she vaguely brought back something that reminded him of Ann he could not have told. He knew nothing whatever of types early-Victorian or late. He took her hand, evidently to her greatest possible amazement, and shook it heartily. She knew nothing whatever of the New York street type, and it made her gasp for breath, but naturally with an allayed terror. “Gee!” he exclaimed whole-heartedly, “I'm glad to find out I've got a relation. I thought I hadn't one in the world. Won't you sit down?” He was drawing her toward his own easy-chair. But he really didn't know, she was agitatedly thinking. She really must tell him. He seemed so good tempered and--and DIFFERENT. She herself was not aware of the enormous significance which lay in that word “different.” There must be no risk of her seeming to presume upon his lack of knowledge. “It is MOST kind of you,” she said with grateful emphasis, “but I mustn't sit down and detain you. I can explain in a few words--if I may.” He positively still held her hand in the oddest, natural, boyish way, and before she knew what she was doing he had made her take the chair--quite MADE her. “Well, just sit down and explain,” he said. “I wish to thunder you would detain me. Take all the time you like. I want to hear all about it--honest Injun.” There was a cushion in the chair, and as he talked, he pulled it out and began to arrange it behind her, still in the most natural and matter-of-fact way--so natural and matter-of-fact, indeed, that its very natural matter-of-factedness took her breath away. “Is that fixed all right?” he asked. Being a little lady, she could only accept his extraordinary friendliness with grateful appreciation, though she could not help fluttering a little in her bewilderment. “Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm,” she said. He sat down on the square ottoman facing her, and leaned forward with an air of making a frank confession. “Guess what I was thinking to myself two minutes before you came in? I was thinking, `Lord, I'm lonesome--just sick lonesome!' And then I opened my eyes and looked--and there was a relation! Hully gee! I call that luck!” “Dear me!” she said, shyly delighted. “DO you, Mr. Temple Barholm--REALLY?”