"Scott seemed to think you were," Irving insisted. "I told him of your beauty, your goodness--well, you can't deny them," as she raised a protesting hand, "and your loyalty to your people. He had not finished his novel, 'Rob Roy,' then, but he told me he was eager to write a new romance, with the adventures of a lovely Jewess named Rebecca to form the silver thread of the story. He has written me from time to time," went on Irving, as Rebecca smiled a little incredulously, "to tell me how the work progressed. Much of the romance was dictated when Scott lay on a couch too ill to write. He tells me that his two secretaries grew to love the heroine, Rebecca, as much as he did, and that once one of them grew so impatient to hear what became of her, that he looked up from his manuscript and cried: 'That is fine, Mr. Scott--get on--get on!'" "And did Mr. Scott finally 'get on' and finish his book with a Jewish heroine?" laughed Rebecca. Irving reached toward the table and handed her a package he had placed there. She broke the string curiously, a slow flush mounting her cheek as she saw the volume, the first to be read by an American, but now in every library in the land. "'Ivanhoe'," she read the tide, softly, "but, surely, I am not in the story." "He sent me this letter with the volume," answered Irving, drawing a sheet of folded taper from between the pages. "I brought it with me because I knew it would interest you." And Rebecca, flushing over one of the most beautiful compliments ever paid an American girl, read: "How do you like my Rebecca? Does the Rebecca I have pictured compare well with the pattern given?" She folded the paper and slipped it back between the pages. "But, surely, I am not in the story," she repeated. "I am not a lady of romance, not a real princess since the days little Matilda and Rachel and I used to dress up and pretend we lived in a fairy tale." Irving's merry eyes softened at mention of their dead friend. Then: "You are more like a lady of romance than any woman I have ever known," he declared stoutly, "and I have met some of the greatest ladies of all Europe. But none of them seemed half so much a queen as you. No, I am not flattering you, Rebecca. Hasn't your brother written me of all your triumphs in society, here in Philadelphia, when he took you to Saratoga Springs, when you visited your brother in Lexington and were treated like a real princess by everyone who met you from Henry Clay down to the negro slaves?" "Oh, that--" Rebecca shrugged a little disdainfully. "I hope the Lady Rebecca in 'Ivanhoe' does something worth while." "She heals the sick and comforts the suffering; she is a great lady in the real sense of the word; lady, a loaf-giver," answered Irving. "Just as you are," he concluded, warmly.