"Good mohning, Miss de Freese. Miss Hawkness? No, she's ill, and isn't visible this mohning. I'm staying with heh. She'll be downright sorry--and Mr. Hawkness, sir," she turned to Garwood, "left wohd to have you wait. He'll be hyah directly. Just step into the drawing-room please," she smiled, but with a little scowl, at the obtuse politician, who seemed disposed to dispute with her, though under the influence of her eyes, he obeyed, and when he had passed in, she continued: "It's too bad, Miss de Freese, raeally--and you've had such a walk this wahm mohning. Oh, nothing serious at all, just one of heh headaches, you know; I'll tell heh--she'll be awfully disappointed." She went into the drawing-room. "Pahdon, sir," she said, "I left my hat." And she crossed to the divan. "Did I understand you to say that Emil--that Miss Harkness was----" "I'll tell heh; she'll come right down." "But you said Mister Harkness had left----" Dade smiled the superior smile of the socially perfect. "You possibly misundahstood me, sir; I said Miss Harkness would be down." She bowed herself out of the room, leaving Garwood with one more perplexity added to those that were already accumulating too rapidly for him. Dade went up the staircase and to Emily's room. The girl was standing by her door, her hands clasped and raised in expectation to her freshly powdered face. "_Le voilà!_" said Dade, pointing tragically over the balusters, and then she went down the back stairs. X Garwood, as he sat in the cool drawing-room that morning, rehearsed again, and, as he suddenly remembered, for the last time, the scene he was about to enact with Emily. He had thought the matter all out, and with his quick perception of the theatrical quality of any situation, he had prepared for it just as he would for a public speech or, when he had the time, for an argument before a jury. As he sat this morning, taking his eye for a moment from the hall door to glance through the open window into the yard, he beheld old Jasper raking the lawn, heard him talking to himself in an expostulatory tone, and knew that the old man was just putting the finishing touches to some imaginary opponent he had vanquished in an argument. And Garwood smiled, and felt a sympathy with the old fellow; he, too, was given to the practice of talking to himself; if the speeches he delivered when walking home at night could only be reproduced on the stump, he would have no fears whatever of the result.