But there was no insincerity about Maudie. She was just as sweet-tempered as she looked. Uncomplainingly, she allowed herself to be despoiled of her finery and wrapped in a sheet while Mary wriggled ecstatically in the heavenly blue dress, pinned the plumed hat on her own bright head and threw the m.u.f.f into a corner of the darkened drawing-room when she found that it interfered with the free expression of her grat.i.tude to John.

And some months later when the trousseau was in progress, the once despised Christmas guest, now a member in good-standing of Mary's household, did tireless service, smilingly, in the sewing-room.

"WHO IS SYLVIA?"

"Lemon, I think," said Miss Knowles, in defiance of the knowledge, born of many afternoons, that he preferred cream. She took a keen and mischievous pleasure in annoying this hot-tempered young man, and she generally succeeded. But to-day he was not to be diverted from the purpose which, at the very moment of his entrance, she had divined.

"Nothing, thank you," he answered. "I'll not have any tea. I came in only for a moment to tell you that I'm going to be married."

"Again?" she asked calmly, as though he had predicted a slight fall of snow. But her calm did not communicate itself to him.

"Again?" he repeated hotly. "What do you mean by 'again?'"

"Now, Jimmie," she remonstrated, as she settled herself more comfortably among her pillows and centered all her apparent attention upon a fragile cup and a small but troublesome sandwich, "don't be savage. I only mean that you always tell me so when you find an opportunity. That you even manufacture opportunities--some of them out of most unlikely material. A chance meeting in a cross-town car; an especially _forte_ place in an opera; the moment when a bishop is saying grace or a host telling his favorite story. And yet you expect me to be surprised to hear it now! Here in my own deserted drawing-room with the fire lighted and the lamps turned low. You forget that one is allowed to remember."

"You allow yourself to forget when you choose and to remember when you wish: You are--"

"And to whom are you going to be married? To the same girl? Do you know, I think she is not worthy of you?"

"She is not," he acquiesced, and she, for a pa.s.sing moment, seemed disconcerted. "Yet she is," he continued, cheered by this slight triumph, "the most persistent, industrious and deserving of all the young persons who, attracted by my great position and vast wealth, are pressing themselves or being pressed by designing relatives upon my notice."

His hostess laughed softly.

"Make allowances for them," she pleaded. "You know very few men can rival your advantages. The sixth son of a retired yet respectable stock broker, and an income of four thousand a year derived from a small but increasing--shall we say increasing--?"

"Diminishing; incredible as it may seem, diminishing."

"From a small but diminishing law practice. And with these you must mention your greatest charm."

"Which is?"

"Your humility, your modesty, your lack of self-a.s.sertiveness. Do you think she recognizes that? It is so difficult to fully appreciate your humility."

Jimmie grinned. "She's up to it," said he. "She knows all about it.

She's as clever, as keen, as clear-sighted."

"Is she, perhaps, pleasing to the eye?" asked Miss Knowles idly. "Clever women are often so--well, so--"

Jimmie gazed at her across the little tea-table. He filled his eyes with her. And, since his heart was in his eyes, he filled that, too. After a moment he made solemn answer:

"She is the most beautiful woman G.o.d ever made."

"Ah, now," said Miss Knowles, returning her cup to its fellows and turning her face, and her mind, more entirely to him, "now we grow interesting. Describe her to me."

"Again?" Jimmie plagiarized.

"Yes, again. Tell me, what is she like?"

"She is like," he began so deliberately that his hostess, leaning forward, hung upon his words, "she is exactly like--nothing." The hostess sat back. "There was never anything in the least like her. To begin with, she is fair and young and slim. She is tall enough, and small enough and her eyes are gray and black and blue."

"She sounds disreputable, your paragon."

"And her eyes," he insisted, "are gray in the sunlight, blue in the lamplight, and black by the light of the moon."

"And in the firelight?"

He rose to kick the logs into a greater brightness; and when he had studied her glowing face until it glowed even more brightly, he answered:

"In the firelight they are--wonderful. She has--did I tell you?--the whitest and smallest of teeth."

"They're so much worn this year," she laughed, and wondered the while what evil instinct tempted her to play this dangerous game; why she could not refrain from peering into the deeper places of his nature to see if her image were still there and still supreme? Why should she, almost involuntarily, work to create and foster an emotion upon which she set no store, which indeed, only amused her in its milder manifestations and frightened her when it grew intense? He showed symptoms of unwelcome seriousness now, but she would have none of it.

"Go on," she urged. "Unless you give her a few more features she will be like little Red Riding Hood's grandmother."

"And she has," he proceeded obediently, "eyebrows and eyelashes--"

"One might have guessed them."

"--beyond the common, long and dark and soft. The rest of her face is the only possible setting for her eyes. It is perfection."

"And is she gentle, womanly, tender? Is she, I so often wonder, good enough to you?"

"She treats me hundreds of times better than I deserve."

"Doesn't she rather swindle you? Doesn't she let you squander your time?"--she glanced at the clock--"your substance?"--she bent to lay her cheek against the violets at her breast--"your affection upon her--?"

"And how could she be kinder? And when I marry her--"

"And _if_," Miss Knowles amended.

"There's no question about it," he retorted. "She knows that I shall marry her." Miss Knowles looked unconvinced. "She knows that she will marry me." Miss Knowles looked rebellious. "She knows that I shall never marry anyone else." Miss Knowles took that apparently for granted.

"Dear boy!" said she.

"That I have waited seven years for her."

"Poor boy!" said she.

"That I shall wait seven more for her."

"Silly boy!" said she.

"And so I stopped this afternoon to tell her that I'm coming home to marry her in two or three months."

"Coming home?" she questioned with not much interest. "Where are you going?"