"For, when I come to think of it," I reflected, "he simply said she was older than Miss Hugonin. I embroidered the tale so glibly for Peter's benefit that I was deceived by my own ornamentations. I had looked for corkscrew ringlets and false teeth a-gleam like a new bath-tub in Miss Hugonin's cousin,--not an absolutely, supremely, inexpressibly unthinkable beauty like this!" I cried, in my soul. "Older! Why, good Lord, Miss Hugonin must be an infant in arms!" But my audible discourse was prefaced with an eloquent gesture. "If I'd care!" I said. "Haven't I already told you I was a connoisseur in gardens? Why, simply look, Miss Beechinor!" I exhorted her, and threw out my hands in a large pose of admiration. "Simply regard those yew-hedges, and parterres, and grassy amphitheatres, and palisades, and statues, and cascades, and everything--_everything_ that goes to make a formal garden the most delectable sight in the world! Simply feast your eyes upon those orderly clipped trees and the fantastic patterns those flowers are laid out in! Why, upon my word, it looks as if all four books of Euclid had suddenly burst into blossom! And you ask me if I would _care_! Ah, it is evident _you_ are not a connoisseur in gardens, Miss Beechinor!" And I had started on my way into this one, when the girl stopped me. "This must be yours," she said. "You must have spilled it coming over the wall, Mr. Townsend." It was Peter's cigarette-case. "Why, dear me, yes!" I assented, affably. "Do you know, now, I would have been tremendously sorry to lose that? It is a sort of present--an unbirthday present from a quite old friend." She turned it over in her hand. "It's very handsome," she marvelled. "Such a pretty monogram! Does it stand for Poor Idiot Boy?" "Eh?" said I. "P.I.B., you mean? No, that stands for Perfectly Immaculate Behaviour. My friend gave it to me because, he said, I was so good. And--oh, well, he added a few things to that,--partial sort of a friend, you know,--and, really--Why, really, Miss Beechinor, it would embarrass me to tell you what he added," I protested, and modestly waved the subject aside. "Now that," my meditations ran, "is the absolute truth. Peter did tell me I was good. And it really would embarrass me to tell her he added 'for-nothing.' So, this far, I have been a model of veracity." Then I took the case,--gaining thereby the bliss of momentary contact with a velvet-soft trifle that seemed, somehow, to set my own grosser hand a-tingle--and I cried: "Now, Miss Beechinor, you must show me the pergola. I am excessively partial to pergolas." And in my soul, I wondered what a pergola looked like, and why on earth I had been fool enough to waste the last three days in bedeviling Peter, and how under the broad canopy of heaven I could ever have suffered from the delusion that I had seen a really adorable woman before to-day. 3