“He has borrowed another man’s name!” she exclaimed; “why, that’s stealing!”

“No, merely kleptomania,” I replied; “he wouldn’t be the other man if he could.  But it has struck me that the real Mr. Allen might turn up here, or some friend of his, and stir things a bit.  My advice to you is to keep quiet, and we may have a comedy worth seeing.”

“Well,” she remarked, after she had got over a little of her astonishment, “it would be great fun to tell, but I won’t if you say so.”

I came to, have a real liking for Miss Trevor.  Farrar used to smile when I spoke of this, and I never could induce him to go out with us in the canoe, which we did frequently,—­in fact, every day I was at Asquith, except of course Sundays.  And we grew to understand each other very well.  She looked upon me in the same light as did my other friends, —­that of a counsellor-at-law,—­and I fell unconsciously into the role of her adviser, in which capacity I was the recipient of many confidences I would have got in no other way.  That is, in no other way save one, and in that I had no desire to go, even had it been possible.  Miss Trevor was only nineteen, and in her eyes I was at least sixty.

“See here, Miss Trevor,” I said to her one day after we had become more or less intimate, “of course it’s none of my business, but you didn’t feel very badly after the Celebrity went away, did you?”

Her reply was frank and rather staggering.

“Yes, I did.  I was engaged to him, you know.”

“Engaged to him!  I had no idea he ever got that far,” I exclaimed.

Miss Trevor laughed merrily.

“It was my fault,” she said; “I pinned him down, and he had to propose.  There was no way out of it.  I don’t mind telling you.”

I did not know whether to be flattered or aggrieved by this avowal.

“You know,” she went on, her tone half apologetic, “the day after he came he told me who he was, and I wanted to stop the people we passed and inform them of the lion I was walking with.  And I was quite carried away by the honor of his attentions:  any girl would have been, you know.”

“I suppose so,” I assented.

“And I had heard and read so much of him, and I doted on his stories, and all that.  His heroes are divine, you must admit.  And, Mr. Crocker,” she concluded with a charming naivety, “I just made up my mind I would have him.”

“Woman proposes, and man disposes,” I laughed.  “He escaped in spite of you.”

She looked at me queerly.

“Only a jest,” I said hurriedly; “your escape is the one to be thankful for.  You might have married him, like the young woman in The Sybarites.  You remember, do you not, that the hero of that book sacrifices himself for the lady who adores him, but whom he has ceased to adore?”

“Yes, I remember,” she laughed; “I believe I know that book by heart.”

“Think of the countless girls he must have relieved of their affections before their eyes were opened,” I continued with mock gravity.  “Think of the charred trail he has left behind him.  A man of that sort ought to be put under heavy bonds not to break any more hearts.  But a kleptomaniac isn’t responsible, you understand.  And it isn’t worth while to bear any malice.”