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 heroic-looking man, Wicky! Why, I felt like one of Tennyson's ladies released from her dark tower by a Knight of the Round Table. Then you went away and married a German Gretchen! And all my doing, because if I hadn't given you a letter to Franz you wouldn't have met Elsa. So when I heard the news, I thought, 'There goes my romance!'"

Daddy Small laughed again, joyously.

"Say, my dear," he said, "you're making poor old Wickham blush like an Englishman asked to tell the story of his V.C. in public."

Brand laughed, too, in his harsh, deep voice.

"Why, Eileen, you ought to have told me before I moved out of Lille."

"And where would maiden modesty have been?" asked Eileen, in her humourous way.

"Where is it now?" asked the little doctor.

"Besides," said Brand, "I had that letter to Franz von Kreuzenach in my pocket. I don't mind telling you I detested the fellow for his infernal impudence in making love to you."

"Sure now, it was a one-sided affair, entirely," said Eileen, exaggerating her Irish accent, "but one has to be polite to a gentleman that saves one's life on account of a romantic passion. Oh, Wickham, it's very English you are!"

Brand could find nothing to say for himself, and it was I who came to the rescue of his embarrassment by dragging a red herring across the thread of Eileen's discourse. She had a wonderful way of saying things that on most girls' lips would have seemed audacious, or improper, or high-falutin, but on hers were natural with a simplicity which shone through her.

Her sense of humour played like a light about her words, yet beneath her wit was a tenderness and a knowl