"No, Mammy, that's just what he's _not_ going to do," exclaimed Brenda, sitting up and clasping her hands behind her neck. "Nitocris Marmion is in love with some one else, and Lord Leighton is in love with me--at least he said so last night at 'The Wilderness,' and I don't suppose he'd have said it if he hadn't meant it--and I told him to go and ask his Papa: and now I'm going to ask my Poppa and Mammy if I may be Lady Leighton soon, and, perhaps, some day Countess of Kyneston. You see, Lord Leighton is just a viscount now----" "What, just a viscount!" exclaimed Mrs van Huysman, getting up from her chair and putting a plump arm round her neck. "Just a viscount--and heir to one of the oldest peerages in England! Oh, Brenda, is it really true?" "I guess Brenda wouldn't say it if it wasn't, and that's about all there is to it," said her father, putting his long arm out over the table. "I congratulate you, my girl. Mammy and I may have been a bit troubled over some of those other refusals of yours, but you seem to have known best, after all: and I reckon your Uncle Ephraim'll think the same. Lord Leighton's a man right through. He wouldn't have done what he has done if he hadn't been. Shake, child, and----" Brenda "shook," and then, without another word, she got up and hurried out of the room. "The girl's right!" said Professor van Huysman, as the door closed behind her; "and if I'm not a fool entirely, she's found the right man." "Hoskins, you can leave that to a well-brought-up girl like Brenda all the time. She _is_ right, and all we've got to hope for now is that the Earl will be right too," said his wife somewhat anxiously. "He's just got to see our girl and then he will be, unless he's a natural born idiot, which, of course, he couldn't be," replied Brenda's father in a tone of absolute conviction. "Now, I wonder what that man Marmion's going to let loose on us to-morrow night?" "Good morning, sir," said Lord Leighton, as his father came into the breakfast-room at about the same time that Brenda left the other room in the Savoy. "Good morning, Lester," replied the Earl of Kyneston, as father and son shook hands in the old courtly fashion which, within the last half century, has gone out of vogue save among those who have ancestors whose record is a credit to their descendants. "You are looking very well and fit--and there is something else. What is it? Had you a very pleasant evening yesterday at 'The Wilderness'? Has Miss Marmion revoked her decision after all?" "No, sir," said his son, looking at him with brightening eyes; "but she convinced me that I had thought myself in love with the wrong girl--and the other girl was on the lawn at the same time, talking with the man that Miss Marmion was, and is in love with, and will be always, I think." "And the other young lady, Lester--because, of course, she is a lady, I mean in our sense of the word, much misunderstood as it is in these days?" "She is Brenda van Huysman, sir."