have been inappropriate and ungracious. I could appear only compassionate and gratified.
"Things do happen right sometimes, you see," pursued Cousin Elizabeth, triumphing in this refutation of some little sneer of mine which she had contested the day before. "I knew you had come to care for her, and now she cares for you. I never was indifferent to that side of it. I always hoped. And now it really is so! Kiss me, Augustin dear."
I kissed Cousin Elizabeth. I was miles away in thought, lost in perplexed musings.
"I comforted her, and told her that the time would soon pass, and that then she would have you all to herself, with no tiresome people to interrupt. But the poor darling still cried a little. But one can't really grieve, can one? A little sorrow means so much happiness later on, doesn't it? And though I couldn't comfort her, you'll be able to, I daresay. What's a month?"
"Nothing," said I. I was conscious of realizing that it was at all events very little.
"I shall expect to see her quite smiling after she's had a little talk with you," was Cousin Elizabeth's parting speech. It won from me a very reassuring nod, and left me in mazes of bewilderment. There was nothing in particular which I believed, but I disbelieved one thing very definitely. It was that Elsa wept because she must be absent from me for a month—a month delightfully busied with the making of four hundred frocks.
Impelled partly by duty but more by curiosity, I went in search of her. Having failed to find her in the house or on the terrace, I descended into the hanging woods, and made for an arbour which she and I and Varvilliers had fallen into the habit of fre-
