"You don't count, Pokie," she exclaimed, as she made a good-natured face at him.

"That's what Evelina said four years ago—and she has proved it," he answered her, looking at me just exactly as if he had never left off doing it since that last dance.

"How lovely to find you in the same exuberant spirits in which I left you, Polk, dear," I exclaimed, as I got up to go and shake hands with him, as he had sunk into the most comfortable chair in the room, without troubling to bestow that attention upon me.

Some men's hearts beat with such a strong rhythm that every feminine heart which comes within hearing distance immediately catches step, and goes to waltzing. It has {61} been four years since mine swung around against his, at that dance, but I'm glad Cousin Martha was there, and interrupted, us enough to make me drag my eyes from his, as he looked up and I looked down.

"Please help us to persuade Evelina to come and live with James and me, Polk, dear," she said, glancing at him with the deepest confidence and affection in her eyes. There is no age-limit to Polk's victims, and Cousin Martha had always adored him.

"All women do, Evelina, why not you—live with James?" he asked, and I thought I detected a mocking flicker in his big, hazel, dangerous eyes.

"If I ever need protection it will be James—and Cousin Martha I will run to for it—but I never will," I answered him, very simply, with not a trace of the defiance I was fairly flinging at him in either my voice or manner.

Paris and London and New York are <