Chapter 14

“Yes,” she understood: “with the glory of our grand gift thrown in.”

“We quite swagger,” he gravely observed--“though even swaggering would after this be dull without you.”

“Oh, I’ll _swagger_ with you!” she cried as if it quite settled and made up for everything; and then impatiently, as she beheld Lord John, whom the door had burst open to admit: “The Prince?”

“The Prince!”--the young man launched it as a call to arms.

They had fallen apart on the irruption, the pair discovered, but she flashed straight at her lover: “Then we can swagger now!”

Lord Theign had reached the open door. “I meet him below.”

Demurring, debating, however, she stayed him a moment. “But oughtn’t I--in my own house?”

His lordship caught her meaning. “You mean he may think--?” But he as easily pronounced. “He shall think the Truth!” And with a kiss of his hand to her he was gone.

Lord John, who had gazed in some wonder at these demonstrations, was quickly about to follow, but she checked him with an authority she had never before used and which was clearly the next moment to prove irresistible. “Lord John, be so good as to stop.” Looking about at the condition of a room on the point of receiving so august a character, she observed on the floor the fragments of the torn cheque, to which she sharply pointed. “And please pick up that litter!”

THE END.