[Illustration: "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips]
"Do you see?" she began to explain, with the quaint air of practical wisdom he adored in her, "I'm not out at all--and I'm nearly nineteen. Dear mamma fretted over it as it was--and if she knew it hadn't been done yet--Well something must be managed, but I don't know what. It isn't as if Miriam could do anything about it, though she's a great deal older than I am, and has seen a lot of social life at Washington and in England. But she's out of the question. Dear mamma would never have allowed it. And she's no relation to me, besides."
The question, "Who is Miriam?" was on his lips, but he checked it in time. He checked all questions as to her relatives and friends whom he did not know already. He was purposely making ignorance his bliss as long as possible, in the hope that before enlightenment could be forced upon him it would be too late for any one to recede.
"Couldn't they do it for you here?" he asked, when he was sure of what he meant to say. "I know the Miss Martins--"
"Carrie and Ethel! Oh, well! That isn't quite the same thing. _I_ couldn't come out in a place like Buenos Aires--or anywhere, except New York."
"But when you've been through it all, you'll come back here, won't you?"
His eyes sought hers, but he saw only the curtains of the lids--those lids with the curious dusk on them, which reminded him of the petals of certain pansies.
"That'll--depend," she said, after a minute's hesitation.
"It'll depend--on what?" he persisted, softly.
Before she could answer the parrot interrupted, screaming out a bit of doggerel in its hoarse staccato.
"Oh, that bird!" the girl cried, springing up. "I do wish some one would wring its neck."
He got no nearer to his point that day, and perhaps he was not eager to. The present situation, with its excitements and uncertainties, was too blissful to bring to a sudden end. Besides, he was obliged to go through some further rehearsing of the creed adopted in the dawn on Lake Champlain before his self-justification could be complete. It was not that he was questioning his right to act; it was only that he needed to strengthen the chain of arguments by which his action must be supported--against himself. Within his own heart there was something that pleaded against the breaking off of this tender sprig of the true olive to graft it on the wild, in addition to which the attitude of the Jarrott family disconcerted him. It was one thing to push his rights against a world ready to deny them, but it was quite another to take advantage of a trusting affection that came more than half-way to meet him. His mind refused to imagine what they would do if they could know that behind the origin of Herbert Strange there lay the history of Norrie Ford. After all, he was not concerned with them, he asserted inwardly, but with himself. They were intrenched within a world able to take care of itself; while there was no power whatever to protect him, once he made a mistake.