Page:The Tsar's Window.djvu/182

 "My dear child," I replied briskly, "I am more pleased with you than I can say. I did not know that you were capable of such constancy, and I cannot praise you too highly."

"That's a dear! If we were not in the street, I would kiss you. So you do not think it is such a foolish affair, after all?"

"I did not say that. Worldly people would tell you that you were wild. But I don't see anything so strange in your looking forward to an engagement at some future date."

She looked a little crestfallen.

"I am engaged to him now," she murmured.

"Well, I don't think you can expect me to approve of that!"

"I shall be twenty-one in the summer; Roger is coming home in the fall, and will begin to practise at once. Surely, that is not such a dismal prospect."

"Mr. Tremaine would call it so."

"I don't care at all what he calls it," she responded pettishly. "I love Roger, and no one else; and I never will marry any one but him!"

"Bravo!" I cried. "I admire your resolution." Then, as the thought of sundry flirtations which had been going on lately in Petersburg travelled through my mind, I added, in a cooler tone, "If you only live up to your idea, and don't change your mind."

"Roger is not afraid to trust me. He was afraid when I left Paris: he did not expect me to be true to him; and the first time he met me, after that ten months'