of time, that while the one face was blooming now in the perfection of its charm, the charm of the other was still in its calyx.  The adorner intuitively felt something of this.  Perhaps she was not the less fond of her friend that the charms she saw in her were not patent to everybody.  Bring her forward as much as she might, Katie felt that Elizabeth Royal would never be a rival.  She even shrank from this kind of prominence into which Katie’s play was bringing her now.  She had been taken in hand at unawares and showed an impatience that if the other were not quick, would oblige her to leave the work unfinished.

“There,” cried Katie, at last giving the leaves a final pat of arrangement, “that looks well, don’t you think so, Master Waldo?”

“Good morning, Mistress Archdale,” broke in a voice before Waldo could answer.  “And you, Mistress Royal,” bowing low to her.  “After our late hours last night, permit me to felicitate you upon your good health this morning, and—­” he was about to add, “your charming appearance,” but something in the girl’s eyes as she looked full at him held back the words, and for a moment ruffled his smooth assurance.  But as he recovered himself and turned to salute the gentlemen, the smile on his lips had triumph through its vexation.

“My proud lady, keep your pride a little longer,” he said to himself.  And as he bowed to Stephen Archdale with a dignity as great as Stephen’s own, he was thinking:  “My morning in that hot office has not been in vain.  I know your weak point now, my lofty fellow, and it is there that I will undermine you.  You detest business, indeed!  John Archdale feels that with his only son in England studying for the ministry he needs a son-in-law in partnership with him.  The thousands which I have been putting into his business this morning are well spent, they make me welcome here.  Yes, your uncle needs me, Stephen Archdale, for your clever papa is not always brotherly in his treatment, he has more than once brought heavy losses upon the younger firm.  It’s a part of my pleasure in prospect that now I shall be able to checkmate him in such schemes, perhaps to bring back a little of the loss upon the shoulders of his heir.  Ah, I am safer from you than you dream.”  He turned to Waldo, and as the two men bowed, they looked at one another steadily.  Each was remembering their conversation the night before over some Bordeaux in Waldo’s room, for they were staying at the same inn and often spent an hour together.  They had drunk sparingly, but, just returned from their sail, each was filled with Katie Archdale’s beauty, and each had spoken out his purpose plainly, Waldo with an assurance that, if it savored a little of conceit, was full of manliness, the other with a half-smothered fierceness of passion that argued danger to every obstacle in its way.

“You’ve come at the very right moment, Master Harwin,” broke in Katie’s unconscious voice, and she smiled graciously, as she had a habit of doing at everybody; “We were talking about you not two minutes ago.”