By this time he had found his manners.

"Miss Giorgione Willoughby," he said, with a cool bow, "I never knew
you."

"Very well, Sir," I retorted. "Now you and my father have settled the
question, know my amber!" and lifting it again, it got caught in that
curl.

I have good right to love my hair. What was there to do, when it snarled
in deeper every minute, but for him to help me? and then, at the
friction of our hands, the beads gave out slightly their pungent smell
that breathes all through the Arabian Nights, you know; and the perfumed
curls were brushing softly over his fingers, and I a little vexed and
flushed as the blind blew back and let in the sunshine and a roistering
wind;--why, it was all a pretty scene, to be felt then and remembered
afterward. Lu, I believe, saw at that instant how it would be, and moved
away to do as papa had asked; but no thought of it came to me.

"Well, if you can't clear the tangle," I said, "you can see the beads."

But while with delight he examined their curious fretting, he yet saw
me.

I am used to admiration now, certainly; it is my food; without it I
should die of inanition; but do you suppose I care any more for those
who give it to me than a Chinese idol does for--whoever swings incense
before it? Are you devoted to your butcher and milkman? We desire only
the unpossessed or unattainable, "something afar from the sphere of
our sorrow." But, though unconsciously, I may have been piqued by this