"Too good for your taste, Monsieur Othello," laughed Miss Cass, tapping his flushed cheek with her fan. "I see how it is. You think he is a rival." "I don't think it, I know it. Ruth." "Well," with a coquettish toss of her head, "perhaps he is. But you think, moreover, that I admire him. I do, as one might admire a picture. He is good-looking and very nice----" "I can't contradict you," interrupted the young man. "But," she resumed smoothly, "he is not clever, he is not musical, and he is not the most jealous man in the world." "Meaning me, I suppose?" "Of course. Who else should I mean? Come. I won't have your forehead wrinkled." She brushed the lines away with her fan. "Smile, Neil, smile, or I won't speak to you all night." He could not withstand her charming humour, and he did smile. But, in spite of all, he shook his head ruefully. "It's all very well making a joke of it," he said. "I know you love me as I love you, but your father--he knows nothing of our attachment." "My father? Pooh! I can twist him round my finger." "I am not so sure of that. Remember, I have known him many years. He can be hard when he likes, and in this case he will be hard. He is rich, has a position, while I----" "While you are Neil Webster, the great violinist." "Oh that is all right," he said, dismissing his artistic fame with a nod. "But I mean I do not know who my parents are. I never heard of them." "Perhaps, like Topsy, you growed," Ruth said, for she attached no importance to his speech. "Dear! What does it matter?" "A great deal to a proud man like your father. Yet he may know my parents since he brought me up. I'll ask him." "Papa brought you up, Neil? I never knew that. I thought he met you at some house in London, and asked you here because he is so fond of music." The young man frowned and tugged at his moustache. His colour changed. "I should not have told you," he said, in a low voice, "but my tongue runs away with me. We have often talked of my early life." "Let me see," said Miss Cass, gravely mischievous. "I think you did say something about having been brought up in the South of England." "At Bognor," he explained. "An old woman, Mrs. Jent, looked after me there. When it became apparent that I had musical talent your father had me taught on the Continent. I appeared first in America, where I was trained under Durand, the great violinist. I made a success and returned to London; then----" "Then he brought you down here a year ago, and in six months we fell in love with one another, and----" "I loved you from the first," he cried. "How rash!" remarked the girl, pursing her mouth demurely. "But we will say nothing about that. We love now, that is sufficient. But tell me how it was my father first came on the scene of your life? I know much that you have told me: but my father--that is something new." "I can remember him ever since I was a young child--from the age of ten." "Oh then he did not come to you before that?"