"_C'est vrai?_" said Dade, her jealousy appeased. "Then it's all right, dyah--and it's splendid, I think. He's a typical American, you know, and the very man you ought to marry. Mamma's been afraid I'd marry one of those foreignehs, and so have I--but it's splendid. And I tell you--" she settled herself for confidences--"I'll come back from anywheah to the wedding, to be your maid of honah--just as we used to plan--don't you know? Oh, I am so glad, and I think it's noble in you; it's just like you. It'll elect him, too, if you announce it right away. I say, I'll give a luncheon for you, and we can announce it then--no, that wouldn't be correct, would it? We'd have to have the luncheon hyah--but it'll elect him. It would in England, where the women go in for politics more than you do, _n'est ce pas_?" She always spoke of her own land from the detached standpoint a long residence abroad, and sometimes a short one, gives to expatriates. "And--let's plan it all out now, dyah. Will you have it at St. Louis, and Doctah Storey?--why--there--there now----" Emily had pillowed her head on Dade's full bosom, and her long-restrained tears had flooded forth. The larger girl, with the motherly instinct that comes with brimming health, wrapped her friend in her arms, and soothed her, though disengaging one hand now and then to wipe the perspiration that bedewed her own brow. The two girls sat there in silence, rocking back and forth among the pillows in the darkened parlor, until Dade suddenly broke the spell by sitting bolt upright and exclaiming: "_Mon Dieu_, there comes that big De Freese girl. I'm going." And she rose to effect her incontinent desertion at once. Turning in from the street, a large, tranquil blonde, gowned and gloved and bearing a chiffon parasol to keep the sun from her milky complexion, was calmly and coolly crossing the yard. "She's got call in her eye!" exclaimed Dade. And then she hurried on, before she fled, to say all she had left unsaid: "I'll be ovah this aftahnoon, and we'll plan it all out--and I'm going to make mamma spend next wintah in Washington. It'll help some of her diseases--what's the climate of Washington good for, do you know?" But Emily had risen to glance out the window, and then, with her hands to her face, had fled from the room. Dade heard the patter of her feet on the stairs as she gathered up her skirts and soared aloft. And then in her surprise she looked out the window again and saw a tall man, with a broad black hat slouched over his eyes, taking long steps across the lawn. He seemed boorishly to be set on beating the mild blonde to the door. The two callers gained the veranda at the same moment, before the bell could be rung to summon the maid. As she left the parlor Dade snatched her hat from her head and sent it sailing across to the divan, and then, at the door, she smiled and said: