“That’ll be all right,” he politely assured her.

“I am so glad.”  Her laughter rang out gaily.  “Because I’ve been talking about you as if we were the oldest friends, and I’d hate to have them find me out.  I’ve told them everything—­about your appearance you see, and how your hair was parted, and how you were dressed, and—­”

“Luk here,” he interrupted, suddenly discharging his Bowery laugh, “did you tell ’em how he was dressed?” He pointed a jocular finger at me.  “That WUD ‘a’ made a hit!”

“No; we weren’t talking of him.”

“Why not?  He’s in it, too.  Bullieve me, he thinks he is!”

“In the excitement, you mean?”

“Right!” said Mr. Percy amiably.  “He goes round holdin’ Rip Van Winkle Keredec’s hand when the ole man’s cryin’; helpin’ him sneak his trunks off t’ Paris—­playin’ the hired man gener’ly.  Oh, he thinks he’s quite the boy, in this trouble!”

“I’m afraid it’s a small part,” she returned, “compared to yours.”

“Oh, I hold my end up, I guess.”

“I should think you’d be so worn out and sleepy you couldn’t hold your head up!”

“Who?  Me?  Not t’-night, m’little friend.  I tuk my sleep’s aft’noon and let Rameau do the Sherlock a little while.”

She gazed upon him with unconcealed admiration.  “You are wonderful,” she sighed faintly, and “Wonderful!” she breathed again.  “How prosaic are drawing-lessons,” she continued, touching my arm and moving with me toward the pavilion, “after listening to a man of action like that!”

Mr. Percy, establishing himself comfortably in a garden chair at the foot of the gallery steps, was heard to utter a short cough as he renewed the light of his cigarette.

My visitor paused upon my veranda, humming, “Quand l’Amour Meurt” while I went within and lit a lamp.  “Shall I bring the light out there?” I asked, but, turning, found that she was already in the room.

“The sketch-book is my duenna,” she said, sinking into a chair upon one side of the centre table, upon which I placed the lamp.  “Lessons are unquestionable, at any place or time.  Behold the beautiful posies!” She spread the book open on the table between us, as I seated myself opposite her, revealing some antique coloured smudges of flowers.  “Elegancies of Eighteen-Forty!  Isn’t that a survival of the period when young ladies had ‘accomplishments,’ though!  I found it at the chateau and—­”

“Never mind,” I said.  “Don’t you know that you can’t ramble over the country alone at this time of night?”

“If you speak any louder,” she said, with some urgency of manner, “you’ll be ‘hopelessly compromised socially,’ as Mrs. Alderman McGinnis and the Duchess of Gwythyl-Corners say”—­she directed my glance, by one of her own, through the open door to Mr. Percy—­“because he’ll hear you and know that the sketch-book was only a shallow pretext of mine to see you.  Do be a little manfully self-contained, or you’ll get us talked about!  And as for ‘this time of night,’ I believe it’s almost half past nine.”