"Yes indeed, they _would_ have wanted to smooth down any awkwardness," Ralph gaily returned; while the mere saying it made him within the moment see much beyond that supposititious truth, see everything exactly as it had happened. So very much thus emerged to distinctness, so much more than he could have gone into just then even hadn't she, in her way, apparently wished to produce a signal fact before he might, as he would perhaps have said, get in. He got in none the less now with another assured hit. "The notion of our coming together in this way was the best of what they had left behind them when they went off again: _that_ was the real beginning, as you say, of your and my happiness that's to be." She made less and less scruple of showing him how he charmed and amused. "The only thing is that they could scarce have plotted that out before either of us was born. I don't exaggerate my youth," said Molly, "since I've waited for you till now. But I'm not so old as that they could have told by the sight of me that you were going to grow up so certain to like me." "I think _I_ could have told it, my dear, even at the hour of my birth. At any rate," Ralph laughed, "it was a fancy I took to as soon as it was ever mentioned to me----!" "Which it can't have been," she broke in, "before a little more was known about your servant, sir, than you would seem to allow for, even granting she's the wonder you behold!" "I beheld the wonder, and I took it completely in," Ralph instantly answered, "the minute I clapped eyes on the elegant portrait that reached us in New York some time back, of course--yet so lately as to show you all in your present bloom." On his reference to which valuable object there befell him something he might have noted as more remarkable than whatever else had most seemed so, save that each improvisation, as he might fairly have called them all, gave way without fear to the brightening of further lights. Had he expressed at the very moment what hovered there before him he would have called it the gleam of an uncertainty on his young woman's part as to whether, or at least as to when, she had sat for the picture the truth of which was so present to him. He might have caught her in the act of not acknowledging his reference--which it was somehow fortunate for her, wasn't it? that she nevertheless didn't repudiate before he had carried his hand to the inner left pocket of his coat and drawn out in its red morocco case the miniature that was to confirm his words. He had looked at her hard, as to hold her while he made sure of this, and the eyes that met his own, for the space of five seconds, wondered, not obscurely, if he were going to; after which, at the mere feel of the thing in his hand, his lips couldn't help closing an instant as for giddiness, the positive swing of the excitement that declined so to fail. It was at each stroke as if he were treating himself to a wanton degree of it without the least menace of a penalty.