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 remembering how deeply she had often pleased young gentlemen at home by such a charge; and she was laughingly frank enough to mention this now. "I've told boys that before, just to flatter them; but it's really true about you. You're mysterious as thunder."

"I am mysterious?" he repeated; and, although when he spoke English it was usually with an almost undetectable imperfection, he delighted her by adding, "As sunder? How is sunder mysterious?"

She laughed outright and corrected him. "Thunder, not 'sunder.' Can't you say 'thunder'?"

"Is it necessary?"

"Dear me!" she cried. "Isn't anything I ask you to do necessary?"

"Indeed I fear it is," he said seriously, almost ruefully. "Thunder. Is that right? I am as mysterious as sunder—as thunder, I wish to say. How?"

At that she seemed to become serious too. "Well, in the first place you look as if you were keeping some great thought to yourself."

"Am I so bad? You mean an appearance of egotism?"

"No. Not anything like that. What I mean, it's as if you had a high ideal you'd never be willing to