"It's all right. I didn't tumble your hair a bit," said Anthony coolly. "Excuse me, gentlemen, but Wayne understands--and Roger will some day, I hope--that a man who has been thinking about it all the way home can't put it off on account of a couple of idiots who stand and stare instead of politely turning their backs. Oh, don't mention it--it doesn't disturb me at all; and Mrs. Robeson is becoming reconciled to my impetuosity by degrees. Make yourselves at home, boys. Juliet----" "Take them upstairs, Tony, please. Of course we can't let them go back to-night, now we have them. It's beginning to storm heavily, isn't it? I thought so. Take them to the guest-room, Tony--and dinner will be served as soon as you are down." * * * * * "By Jupiter, I believe she means it," declared the doctor, with approval, as the door of the bedroom closed on his host. "I think I can tell when a woman is shamming. She's improved, hasn't she, tremendously? Pretty girl always, but--well--bloomed now. Nice little house. Believe I'll have to stay, though I ought not--just to take observations on Tony. His enthusiasm has all the appearance of reality. In fact, it strikes me he has rather----" It was on his lips to say "rather more than you have," but it occurred to him in time that jokes on this ground are dangerous. Wayne Carey had been married in November, was living in a somewhat unpretentious way in a downtown boarding-house, and certainly had to-night so much of a lost-dog air that it made the doctor pause. So he substituted: "--rather more than I should have expected, even of a fellow who has got the girl he has wanted all his life," and fell to washing and brushing vigorously, eyeing meanwhile the little room with a critical bachelor's appreciation of beauty and comfort in the quarters he is to occupy. It was very simply furnished, certainly, but it struck him as a place where his dreams were likely to be pleasant for every reason in the world. Downstairs, Juliet, in the dining-room, was surveying her table with the hostess's satisfaction. Opposite her stood a tall and slender girl, black-haired, black-eyed, with a face of great attractiveness. "I wish, Mrs. Robeson," she was saying eagerly, "you would let me serve you as your maid, and not make a guest of me. Really, I should love to do it. I don't need to meet your friends, and I don't mind seeming what I really am--your----" "Rachel Redding," Juliet interrupted, lifting an affectionate glance across the table, "if you want to seem what you really are--my friend--you will let me do as I like." "My shabby clothes----" murmured the girl. "If I could look as much like a princess as you do in them----" "Mrs. Robeson, in that lovely dull red you're a queen----"