threatening you with such a possibility."

"Really," said she. "Now I rather like you when you talk like that."

"Fortunate that you do," he returned, "for you will probably hear a good
deal of it."

She nodded with perfect acquiescence. "And now," she said, "if you have
no more hateful things to say, let's go and tell our friends of the great
happiness that has come into our lives."




CHAPTER IV


As they went down the stairs--those same stairs on which only two
evenings before they had first met--toward the drawing-room where their
great announcement was to be made, Riatt stopped Christine in her
triumphal progress.

"You're not going to have the supreme cruelty," he said, "to let poor
Hickson think that our engagement is a genuine one?"

Christine paused. "I wonder," she answered thoughtfully, "which in the
end would deceive him most--to make him think it was real or fake?"

"You blood-curdling woman," said Riatt. "I am not engaged to you."