“He’s going to marry me some day. He’s just Jack Latimer, the stenographer in the office. But I like him, and that’s all there is to it. But mommer’s terribly set on you. And she’s so determined. Oh, Count de Lamolle, it’s very hard to make determined people see things differently to what they want. So please, don’t want to marry me any more, for if you don’t want to, that will have to end it.” She stopped, her lips trembling. The count took her hand, cold and clammy, and lifting it pressed his lips lightly on the back. Then, dropping it, he said, quietly: “All is understood. You have honored me highly, Mademoiselle, by giving me your confidence.” They stood silent for a moment. The kiss on her hand, the something friendly and kind--so different from the cold looks of unadmiring criticism she was accustomed to--in the man’s eyes brought her uncomfortably close to tears. Few people had been kind to Maud Shackleton in the midst of her riches and splendor. The count saw her emotion and turned toward the fire. He felt more drawn to her than he had ever been during his courtship. From the tail of his eye he saw her little handkerchief whisk out and then into her pocket. As it disappeared he said: “I see, Miss Shackleton, that you have some albums of views on the table. Might we not look at them together?” Thus it was that Bessie and Essex found them. They had worked through two volumes of Northern Italy, and were in Switzerland. And over the stiffened pages with their photographs, not one-half of which Maud could remember though she had been to all the places on her trip abroad, they had come nearer being friends than ever before. CHAPTER XX THE WOMAN TALKS “My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned; then I spake with my tongue.”--PSALMS. The morning after her interview with Essex Mariposa had appeared at breakfast white-cheeked and apathetic. She had eaten nothing, and when questioned as to her state of health had replied that she had passed a sleepless night and had a headache. Mrs. Garcia, the younger, in a dingy cotton wrapper belted by a white apron, shook her head over the coffee-pot and began to tell how the late Juan Garcia had been the victim of headaches due to green wall-paper. “But,” said Mrs. Garcia, looking up from under the lambrequin of blond curls that adorned her brow, “there’s nothing green in your wall-paper. It’s white, with gold wheat-ears on it. So I don’t see what gives you headaches.” “Headaches _do_ come from other things besides green wall-paper,” said Pierpont; “I’ve had them from overwork. I’d advise Miss Moreau to give her pupils a week’s holiday. And then she can come down some afternoon and sing for me.”