“Check off No. 1.  What’s No. 2?”

“Lots older.  Mr. Thomas Murray Smith is an unspoiled millionaire.  If he weren’t so serious and quite so dangerously near forty—­ well, I don’t know.”

“Have you kept No. 3 for the last because he’s the best?”

“No-o-o-o.  Because he’s the nearest.  He followed me down.  You can see his name in all its luster on the Hotel Kast register, when you get back to the city—­Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll, at your service.”

“Sounds Southern,” commented the man below.

“Southern!  He’s more Southern than the South Pole.  His ancestors fought all the wars and owned all the negroes—­he calls them ’niggers’—­and married into all the first families of Virginia, and all that sort of thing.  He must quite hate himself, poor Fitz, for falling in love with a little Yankee like me.  In fact, that’s why I made him do it.”

“And now you wish he hadn’t?”

“Oh—­well—­I don’t know.  He’s awfully good-looking and gallant and devoted and all that.  Only he’s such a prickly sort of person.  I’d have to spend the rest of my life keeping him and his pride out of trouble.  And I’ve no taste for diplomacy.  Why, only last week he declined to dine with the President of the Republic because some one said that his excellency had a touch of the tar brush.”

“He’d better get out of this country before that gets back to headquarters.”

“If he thought there was danger, he’d stay forever.  I don’t suppose Fitz is afraid of anything on earth.  Except perhaps of me,” she added after-thoughtfully.

“Young woman, you’re a shameless flirt!” accused the invisible one in stern tones.

“If I am, it isn’t going to hurt you.  Besides, I’m not.  And, anyway, who are you to judge me?  You’re not here as a judge; you’re an augur.  Now, go on and aug.”

“Aug?” repeated the other hesitantly.

“Certainly.  Do an augury.  Tell me which.”

“Oh!  As for that, it’s easy.  None.”

“Why not?”

“Because I much prefer to think of you, when you are gone, as unmarried.  It’s more in character with your voice.”

“Well, of all the selfish pigs!  Condemned to be an old maid, in order not to spoil an ideal!  Perhaps you’d like to enter the lists yourself,” she taunted.

“Good Heavens, no!” he cried in the most unflattering alarm.  “It isn’t in my line—­I mean I haven’t time for that sort of thing.  I’m a very busy man.”

“You look it!  Or you did look it, scrambling about like a doodle bug after your absurd spectacles.”

“There is no such insect as a doodle bug.”

“Isn’t there?  How do you know?  Are you personally acquainted with all the insect families?”

“Certainly.  That’s my business.  I’m a scientist.”

“Oh, gracious!  And I’ve appealed to you in a matter of sentiment!  I might better have stuck to Fitz.  Poor Fitz!  I wonder if he’s lost.”