"You're a perfect wretch, Scott. I don't want to talk about your unholy
extravagance."

The boy laughed and stood at ease looking at the pretty face partly
disclosed between door and wall with darkness for a velvety background.

"Just come out into the library while I smoke one cigarette," he began
in his wheedling way. "I'm dying to talk to you about the
game-preserve----"

"I can't; I'm not attired for a tête-à-tête with anything except my
pillow."

"Then put on one of those fetching affairs you wear sometimes----"

"Oh, Scott, you are a nuisance!"

When, a few moments later, she came into the library in a delicate
shimmering thing and little slippers of the same elusive tint, Scott
jumped up and dragged a big chair forward.

"You certainly are stunning, Kathleen," he said frankly; "you look
twenty with all the charm of thirty. Sit here; I've a map of the
Roya-Neh forest to show you."

He drew up a chair for himself, lifted a big map from the table, and,
unrolling it, laid it across her knees. Then he began to talk
enthusiastically about lake and stream and mountain, and about wild boar
and deer and keepers and lodges; and she bent her pretty head over the
map, following his moving pencil with her eyes, sometimes asking a