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“How well you did it! Wasn’t it hard to act all the time?” asked Amy, wonderingly.

“Very hard with Helen, she is so keen, but not a bit so with you, for you are such a confiding soul any one could cheat you. I’ve betrayed myself a dozen times, and you never saw it. Ah, it was capital fun to play the forlorn exile, study English, and flirt with my cousin.”

“It was very base. I should think you’d be devoured with remorse. Aren’t you sorry?”

“For one thing. I cropped my head lest you should know me. I was proud of my curls, but I sacrificed them all to you.”

“Peacock! Did you think that one glimpse of your black eyes and fine hair would make such an impression that I should recognize you again?”

“I did, and for that reason disfigured my head, put on a mustache, and assumed hideous spectacles. Did you never suspect my disguise, Amy?”

“No. Helen used to say that she felt something was wrong, but I never did till the other night.”

“Didn’t I do that well? I give you my word it was all done on the spur of the minute. I meant to speak soon, but had not decided how, when you came out so sweetly with that confounded old cloak, of which I’d no more need than an African has of a blanket. Then a scene I’d read in a novel came into my head, and I just repeated it con amore. Was I very pathetic and tragical. Amy?”

“I thought so then. It strikes me as ridiculous now, and I can’t help feeling sorry that I wasted so much pity on a man who–“

“Loves you with all his heart and soul. Did you cry and grieve over me, dear little tender thing? and do you think now that I am a heartless fellow, bent only on amusing myself at the expense of others? It’s not so; and you shall see how true and good and steady I can be when I have any one to love and care for me. I’ve been alone so long it’s new and beautiful to be petted, confided in, and looked up to by an angel like you.”

He was in earnest now; she felt it, and her anger melted away like dew before the sun.

“Poor boy! You will go home with us now, and let us take care of you in quiet England. You’ll play no more pranks, but go soberly to work and do something that shall make me proud to be your cousin, won’t you?”

“If you’ll change ‘cousin’ to ‘wife’ I’ll be and do whatever you please. Amy, when I was a poor, dying, Catholic foreigner you loved me and would have married me in spite of everything. Now that I’m your well, rich, Protestant cousin, who adores you as that Pole never could, you turn cold and cruel. Is it because the romance is gone, or because your love was only a girl’s fancy, after all?”

“You deceived me and I can’t forget it; but I’ll try,” was the soft answer to his reproaches.

“Are you disappointed that I’m not a baron?”

“A little bit.”

“Shall I be a count? They gave me a title in Poland, a barren honor, but all they had to offer, poor souls, in return for a little blood. Will you be Countess Zytomar and get laughed at for your pains, or plain Mrs. Power, with a good old English name?”

“Neither, thank you; it’s only a girlish fancy, which will soon be forgotten. Does the baron love Helen?” asked Amy, abruptly.

“Desperately, and she?”

“I think he will be happy; she is not one to make confidantes, but I know by her tenderness with me, her sadness lately, and something in her way of brightening when he comes, that she thinks much of him and loves Karl Hoffman. How it will be with the baron I cannot say.”

“No fear of him; he wins his way everywhere. I wish I were as fortunate;” and the gay young gentleman heaved an artful sigh and coughed the cough that always brought such pity to the girl’s soft eyes.