were when we heard papa.  I scampered; but he saw only Lu; and grasped her hands.  Then, of course, I stopped on the baluster to look.  They didn’t say anything, only seemed to be reading up for the two years in each other’s eyes; but Lu dropped her kid box, and as he stooped to pick it up, he held it, and then took out the ring, looked at her and smiled, and put it on his own finger.  The one she had always worn was no more a mystery.  He has such little hands! they don’t seem made for anything but slender crayons and watercolors, as if oils would weigh them down with the pigment; but there is a nervy strength about them that could almost bend an ash.

Papa’s breezy voice blew through the room next minute, welcoming him; and then he told Lu to put up her jewels, and order luncheon, at which, of course, the other wanted to see the jewels nearer; and I couldn’t stand that, but slipped down and walked right in, lifting my amber, and saying, “Oh, but this is what you must look at!”

He turned, somewhat slowly, with such a lovely indifference, and let his eyes idly drop on me.  He didn’t look at the amber at all; he didn’t look at me; I seemed to fill his gaze without any action from him, for he stood quiet and passive; my voice, too, seemed to wrap him in a dream,—­only an instant; though then I had reached him.

“You’ve not forgotten Yone,” said papa, “who went persimmon and came apricot?”

“I’ve not forgotten Yone,” answered he, as if half asleep.  “But who is this?”

“Who is this?” echoed papa.  “Why, this is my great West Indian magnolia, my Cleopatra in light colors, my”——­

“Hush, you silly man!”

“This is she,” putting his hands on my shoulders,—­“Miss Giorgione Willoughby.”

By this time he had found his manners.

“Miss Giorgione Willoughby,” he said, with a cool bow, “I never knew you.”

“Very well, Sir,” I retorted.  “Now you and my father have settled the question, know my amber!” and lifting it again, it got caught in that curl.

I have good right to love my hair.  What was there to do, when it snarled in deeper every minute, but for him to help me? and then, at the friction of our hands, the beads gave out slightly their pungent smell that breathes all through the Arabian Nights, you know; and the perfumed curls were brushing softly over his fingers, and I a little vexed and flushed as the blind blew back and let in the sunshine and a roistering wind;—­why, it was all a pretty scene, to be felt then and remembered afterward.  Lu, I believe, saw at that instant how it would be, and moved away to do as papa had asked; but no thought of it came to me.

“Well, if you can’t clear the tangle,” I said, “you can see the beads.”

But while with delight he examined their curious fretting, he yet saw me.