“Yes, that’s true,” Craig admitted, “but I like him, though I confess it is rather tiresome reading him alone. I have taken up Sordello, and your cousin was kind enough to say that she thought you might like a short reading some afternoon. My mother, I know, will join us; possibly your mother and Mr. Hilton, when he can. He is a very intelligent man,—far above the average. Do you think you would like it?” “I shall be delighted,” Helen answered promptly, wondering which she should find the pleasanter, driving over dusty, stony roads, with sassafras and brier bushes growing beside them, or listening to Sordello, of which she had not the most remote idea. But she had committed herself, and Craig was pleased, and believed he had found a bright disciple of Browning, and told her he expected much from her opinion and quick appreciation of what was to most people abstruse and dry. Helen thought of the Potted Sprats in Mrs. Opie’s White Lies, and concluded she was eating a tremendous one. “What shall I do if Alice doesn’t get me the book?” she asked herself, deciding that a sick headache, whenever Browning was on the carpet would be the only alternative. As if in answer to her thought Alice appeared at that moment, and in response to an interrogatory glance from Helen nodded an affirmative. She had unquestionably found the book and Helen’s fears were given to the winds. With her ready memory she could, if she tried, commit pages of Sordello, or anything else, and her face glowed with satisfaction and confidence. Craig had scarcely given Alice a thought in his absorption with Helen, but when she appeared a reaction came and he wondered why he should suddenly feel so cool and restful. It was because she looked so restful and cool, he concluded, and yet she declared herself very warm, and, declining the chair he offered her, sat down upon the steps and fanned herself with her hat, while Helen, relieved from all anxiety, began what Alice called an outrageous flirtation of jokes and brilliant sallies which poor Craig no more understood than she did Browning, and which so confused and bewildered him that he was glad when at last he saw his stately mother coming toward him with a showily-dressed woman whom he recognized as Mrs. Tracy. CHAPTER XIV. THE DIAMONDS.