was only nineteen, and in her eyes I was at least sixty.

"See here, Miss Trevor," I said to her one day after we had become more
or less intimate, "of course it's none of my business, but you didn't
feel very badly after the Celebrity went away, did you?"

Her reply was frank and rather staggering.

"Yes, I did. I was engaged to him, you know."

"Engaged to him! I had no idea he ever got that far," I exclaimed.

Miss Trevor laughed merrily.

"It was my fault," she said; "I pinned him down, and he had to propose.
There was no way out of it. I don't mind telling you."

I did not know whether to be flattered or aggrieved by this avowal.

"You know," she went on, her tone half apologetic, "the day after he came
he told me who he was, and I wanted to stop the people we passed and
inform them of the lion I was walking with. And I was quite carried away
by the honor of his attentions: any girl would have been, you know."

"I suppose so," I assented.

"And I had heard and read so much of him, and I doted on his stories, and
all that. His heroes are divine, you must admit. And, Mr. Crocker," she
concluded with a charming naivety, "I just made up my mind I would have
him."