Why, by Jove, I almost took a cropper right into them! Only caught just in time, you know; straightened right on the verge, as it were--and came up with a gasp, monocle dangling. Had almost forgotten the dashed windows--and the two cats that might be looking out! I murmured some jolly apology, adding: "Oh, yes--quite so; certainly! I _mean_--eh what?" She was smiling, her rose-petal lip dragging through her teeth. "The 'bobby,' you know, just now"--she nodded toward the _porte-cochere_--"I was positive he had come to drag you away to your loathsome dungeon. And when he retired, I was--oh, _so_ relieved!" And she clasped her hands, her eyes lifting upward. "Oh, I say now--were you, though?" I grinned delightedly and slipping to a rustic chair beside her, looked her affectionately in the eye. For all her air of chaffing, I knew that under it was a current of anxiety for me--the darling! I screwed my glass at her tenderly. "What would you have done," I said softly, "if he had--er--lugged me off, you know?" "_Can_ you ask?" What a reproachful side-glance she shot me through the meshes of her silken what-you-call-'ems! "Why, of course, I should have drawn my good excalibar and run him thr-r-rough and thr-r-r-ough!" By Jove, how she said it! And she illustrated with the stemless rose--dash it, no; the roseless stem! She was _superb_--looked like the jolly fencing girl; only a dashed sight more stunning, don't you know! And her excalibar, too! Didn't know what a jolly excalibar was, but guessed it was some delightfully mysterious but deadly feminine thing--some kind of submerged hat-pin-sort-of-thing, you know--_that_ sort, dash it! Yet she would have drawn it--and her _good_ one, too, she said! "Jove!" I said feelingly. "Would you, _really_?" And I almost took her hand--and again remembered the windows! So I just shot her a look. Her glorious eyes sparkled. "That is, I would if I had one," she said smiling; "but I'm afraid poor Arthur lost the last and only one. Sad, isn't it?" "Oh!" I just felt my jolly heart sink like what's-its-name. Who the deuce was "poor Arthur?" This must be another--some other thundering chap who had been engaged to her. And what a rotten, careless beggar, too, to have lost it--that is, if he _really_ had! Of course, he would say so, anyhow. And how the deuce did he get it, in the first place--did she give it to him, or did he-- By Jove, how I should have liked to punch Arthur's head! Always did hate a chap with that name! I flushed guiltily, but she did not see. For the moment, she was looking off dreamily across the valley. "I wonder," she said pensively, "why it is one can never find another man like Arthur. Do you suppose it is because he was the ideal?" For an instant, I swallowed hard--then I plucked up bravely, or tried to, don't you know. "Jolly likely!" I chirped. Then gloomily: "Oh, I say, you know, was he _your_ ideal?"