‘I reckon there’s a lost Lenore most times,’ Miss McCabe had replied to this confession.

But, though never to be forgotten, the memory of the lost one, Bude averred, was now merged in the light of a living love; his heart was no longer tenanted only by a shadow.

The heart of Miss McCabe stood still for a moment, her cheek paled, but the gallant girl was true to herself, to her father’s wish, to her native land, to the flag.  She understood her adorer.

‘Guess I’m bespoke,’ said Miss McCabe abruptly.

‘You are another’s!  Oh, despair!’ exclaimed the impassioned earl.

‘Yes, I reckon I’m the Bride of Seven, like the girl in the poem.’

‘The Bride of Seven?’ said Bude.

‘One out of that crowd will call me his,’ said Miss McCabe, handing to her adorer the list, which she had received by mail a day or two earlier, of the accepted competitors.  He glanced over the names.

1.  Dr. Hiram P. Dodge, of the Smithsonian Institute.

2.  Alfred Jenkins, F.R.S., All Souls College, Oxford.

3.  Dr. James Rustler, Columbia University.

4.  Howard Fry, M.A., Ph.D., Trinity College, Cambridge.

5.  Professor Potter, F.R.S., University of St. Andrews.

6.  Professor Wilkinson, University of Harvard.

7.  Jones Harvey, F.G.S., London, England.

‘In Heaven’s name,’ asked the earl, ’what means this mystification?  Miss McCabe, Melissa, do not trifle with me.  Is this part of the great American Joke?  You are playing it pretty low down on me, Melissa!’ he ended, the phrase being one of those with which she had made him familiar.

She laughed hysterically:  ‘It’s honest Injun,’ she said, and in the briefest terms she told him (what he knew very well) the conditions on which her future depended.

‘They are a respectable crowd, I don’t deny it,’ she went on, ’but, oh, how dull!  That Mr. Jenkins, I saw him at your Commemoration.  He gave us luncheon, and showed us dry old bones of beasts and savage notions at the Museum.  I druther have been on the creek,’ by which name she intended the classical river Isis.

’Dr. Hiram P. Dodge is one of our rising scientists, a boss of the Smithsonian Institute.  Well, Washington is a finer location than Oxford!  Dr. Rustler is a crank; he thinks he can find a tall talk mummy that speaks an unknown tongue.’

‘A Toltec mummy?  Ah,’ said Bude, ‘I know where to find one of them.’

‘Find it then, Alured!’ exclaimed Miss McCabe, blushing scarlet and turning aside.  ’But you are not on the list.  You are an idler, and not scientific, not worth a red cent.  There, I’ve given myself away!’ She wept.

They were alone, beneath the walls of a crumbling fortalice of Lochiel.  The new risen moon saw Bude embrace her and dry her tears.  A nameless blissful hope awakened in the fair American; help there must be, she thought, with these strong arms around her.