you were not the best fellow in the world, I should envy you that latent kiss of a mouth.”
“You need not say it, Wade, — your broken head exempts you from the business of compliments,” said Peter; “but I see you think my wife perfection. You’ll think so the more, the more you know her.”
“Stop, Peter,” said she, “or I shall have to hide behind the superior charms of Mary Damer.”
Miss Damer certainly was a woman of a grander order. You might pull at the bells or knock at the knockers and be introduced into the boudoirs of all the houses, villas, seats, chateaus, and palaces in Christendom without seeing such another. She belonged distinctly to the Northern races, — the “brave and true and tender” women. There was, indeed, a trace of hauteur and imperiousness in her look and manner; but it did not ill become her distinguished figure and face. Wade, however, remembered her sweet earnestness when she was playing leech to his wound, and chose to take that mood as her dominant one.
“She must have been desperately annoyed with bores and boobies,” he thought. “I do not wonder she protects herself by distance. I am afraid I shall never get within her lines again, — not even if I should try slow and regular approaches, and bombard her with bouquets for a twelve-month.”
“But, Wade,” says Peter, “all this time you
