Kilmeny took his eyes from her to let them rest upon a man and a woman walking the river trail below. The man bowed and the Westerner answered the greeting by lifting his hat. When he looked back at his companion he was smiling impishly. For the two by the river bank were Lord and Lady Farquhar. "Caught! You naughty little baggage! I wonder whether you'll be smacked this time." Her eyes met his in a quick surprise that was on the verge of hauteur. "Sir." "Yes, I think you'll be smacked. You know you've been told time and again not to take up with strange boys--and Americans, at that. Mith Lupton warned you on the _Victorian_--and Lady Farquhar has warned you aplenty." Her lips parted to speak, but no sound came from them. She was on the verge of a discovery, and he knew it. "Hope you won't mind the smacking much. Besides, it would be somefing else if it wasn't this," he continued, mimicking a childish lisp he had never forgotten. "Miss Lupton!" A fugitive memory flashed across her mind. What she saw was this: a glassy sea after sunset, the cheerful life on the deck of an ocean liner, a little girl playing at--at--why, at selling stars of her own manufacture. The picture began to take form. A boy came into it, and vaguely other figures. She recalled impending punishment, intervention, two children snuggled beneath a steamer rug, and last the impulsive kiss of a little girl determined to exact the last morsel of joy before retribution fell. "Are you that boy?" she asked, eyes wide open and burning. "It's harder to believe you're that long-legged little fairy in white socks." "So you knew me ... all the time ... and I didn't know you at all." Her voice trembled. The look she flung toward him was shy and diffident. She had loved him then. She loved him now. Somehow he was infinitely nearer to her than he had been. "Yes, I knew you. I've always known you. That's because you're a dream friend of mine. In the daytime I've had other things to think about, but at night you're a great pal of mine." "You mean ... before ... we met again?" "That's what I mean." The pink surged into her cheeks. "I've dreamed about you too," she confessed with an adorable shyness. "How strange it is--to meet again after all these years." "Not strange to me. Somehow I expected to meet you. Wasn't that in your dreams too--that some day we should meet again?" "I was always meeting you. But--why didn't I know you?" "I'll confess that I wouldn't have known you if it hadn't been for your name." "You think I've changed, then?" "No, you haven't changed. You've only grown up. You're still a little rebel. Sometimes you still think it's howwid to be a dirl." "Only when they won't let me do things," she smiled. "And you really remember even my lisp." "You have a faint hint of it yet sometimes when you are excited."