She held out her hand with perfect manners and said:

"I'm so glad. My congratulations." Then, before the bewildered Lackaday
could reply, she tossed his hand to the winds.

"There'll be champagne for dinner and I'm coming down," she cried and fled
like a doe to the house. At the threshold of the drawing-room she turned.

"Does Cousin Auriol know?"

"Nobody knows," I said.

She shouted: "Good egg!" and disappeared.

I turned to the frowning and embarrassed Lackaday.

"Your modesty doesn't appreciate the pleasure that news will give all those
dear people. They've shown you in the most single-hearted way that they're
your friends, haven't they?"

"They have," he admitted. "But it's very extraordinary. I don't belong to
their world. I feel a sort of impostor."

"With this--and all these?"

I flourished the letter which I still held, and with it touched the rainbow
on his tunic. His features relaxed into his childish ear-to-ear grin.

"It's all so incomprehensible--here--in this old place--among these English