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“What way is that?” asked Kitty coldly.

“Forgive me! I could tell him that you are engaged to me.”

“That would be a nice way–to tell him a falsehood! I should hope I had been humiliated enough”–

She snatched her handkerchief from her belt and pressed it to her burning face. I rose again to go. “Sit still, pray!” she murmured.

“It need not be a falsehood, Kitty. Let it be anything you like. You may trust me not to take advantage. A nominal engagement, if you choose, just to meet this exigency; or”–

“That would be cheating,” cried Kitty.

“The cheat would bear a little harder on me than on any one else, I think.”

“You are too good!” Kitty smiled disdainfully. “First you offer yourself to me as a cure, and now as a preventive.”

“Kitty, I think you ought at least to take him seriously,” I remonstrated.

“By all that’s sacred, you’ll find it’s serious with me!” Cecil ejaculated.

“Since when?” retorted Kitty. “How many weeks ago is it that I came out here by your contrivance to marry your cousin? Is that the way a man shows his seriousness? You sacrificed more to marry me to Micky than some men would to win a girl themselves.”

“I did, and for that very reason,” said Cecil.

“I should like to see you prove it!”

“Kitty, excuse me,” I interrupted. ” I should like to ask Mr. Harshaw one question, if he does not mind. Do you happen to have that picture about you, Mr. Harshaw?”

I thought I was looking at him very kindly, not at all like an inquisitor, but his face was set and stern. I doubt if he perceived or looked for my intention.

“‘That picture,’ Mrs. Daly?” he repeated.

“The photograph of a young lady that you jumped into the river to save–don’t you remember?”

Cecil smiled slightly, and glanced at Kitty. “Did I say it was a photograph of a lady?”

“No; you did not. But do you deny that it was?”

“Certainly not, Mrs. Daly. I have the picture with me; I always have it.”

“And do you think that looks like seriousness? To be making such protestations to one girl with the portrait of another in your coat pocket? We have none of us forgotten, I think, that little conversation by the river.”

He saw my meaning now, and thanked me with a radiant look. “Here is the picture, Mrs. Daly. Whose portrait did you think it was? Surely you might have known, Kitty! This is the girl I wanted years ago and have wanted ever since; but she belonged to another man, and the man was my friend. I tried to save that man from insulting her and dishonoring himself, because I thought she loved him. Or, if he couldn’t be saved, I wanted to expose him and save her. And I risked my own honor to do it, and a great fool I was for my pains. But this is the last time I shall make a fool of myself for your sake, Kitty.”

I rose now in earnest, and I would not be stayed. In point of fact, nobody tried to stay me. Kitty was looking at her own face with eyes as dim as the little water-stained photograph she held. And Cecil was on his knees beside her, whispering, “I stole it from Micky’s room at the ranch. That was no place for it, anyhow. May I not have one of my own, Kitty?”

I think he will get one–of his own Kitty.

* * * * *

Our rival schemer, Mr. Norman Fleet, has arrived, and electrical transmission has shaken hands with compressed air. The millennium must be on the way, for never did two men want so nearly the same thing, and yet agree to take each what the other does not need.

Mr. Fleet does not “want the earth,” either, nor all the waters thereof; but the most astonishing thing is, he doesn’t want the Snow Bank! He not only doesn’t want it himself, but is perfectly willing that Tom should have it. In fact, do what we will, it seems to be impossible for us to tread on the tail of that young man’s coat. But having heard a little bird whisper that he is in love, and successfully so, I am not so surprised at his amiability. Neither am I altogether unprepared, if the little bird’s whisper be true, for the fact that Miss Malcolm is becoming reconciled to Tom’s designs upon her beloved scenery. For the sake of consistency, and that pure devotion to the Beautiful, so rare in this sordid age, I could have wished that she had not weakened so suddenly; but for Tom’s sake I am very glad. She is clay in the hands of the potter, now that she knows my husband does not want “all the water,” and that his success does not mean the failure of Mr. Norman Fleet.

Harshaw will take the Snow Bank scheme when he takes Kitty back to London. If he promotes it, I tell Tom, after the fashion in which he “boomed” Kitty’s marriage to his cousin, we’re not likely to see either him or the Snow Bank again. But “Harshaw is all right,” Tom says; and I believe that the luck is with him.