Mariquita awoke early to see Sarella entering her room, and it surprised her, for her cousin was not fond of leaving her bed betimes.

"Oh, I'm going back to bed again," Sarella explained. "We were up to all hours. Of course, your father made a rumpus."

Mariquita heard this with less surprise than concern. It really grieved her to displease him.

"He has very queer old-fashioned notions," Sarella remarked, settling herself comfortably on Mariquita's bed, "and thinks it's his business to arrange all your affairs for you. Besides, you know by this time that any plan he has been hatching he expects to hatch out, and not to help him seems to him most undutiful and shocking."

"But I can't help him in this plan of his," Mariquita pleaded unhappily.

"I suppose not. Well, he flared out, and I was glad you were in bed. Gore behaved very well. It's a thousand pities you can't like him."

"But I do like him. I like him better than any man I ever knew."

"Oh, yes! Better than the cowboys or the old chaplain at Loretto. That's no good."

All this Sarella intended as medicinal; Mariquita, she thought, ought to have some of the chill of the late storm. She was not entitled to immediate and complete relief from suspense. But Sarella was beginning to feel a little chill about the legs herself, and did not care to risk a cold, so she abbreviated her disciplinary remarks a little.

"I'm a good stepmother," she remarked complacently, "not at all like one in a novel. I took your part."

"Did you!" Mariquita cried gratefully; "it was very, very kind of you."

"I don't approve of men having things all their own way—whether fathers or husbands. He has been knocked under to too much. Yes, I took your part, and made him understand that if he kept the row up he'd have three of us against him."

"What did you say?"

"All sorts of things. Never mind. Perhaps Mr. Gore will tell you—only he won't. He said a lot of things too. We made your father think he would be wicked if he went on bullying you."

Of course, Mariquita did not understand how this had been effected.

"He would not do anything wicked," she said; "he is a very good man."

"He'd be a very good mule," Sarella observed coolly, considerably scandalizing Mariquita.

"You'd have found him a pretty unpleasant one, if Gore and I had left you to manage him yourself." Sarella added, entirely unmoved by her cousin's shocked look. "We managed him. He won't beat you now. But you'd better keep out of his way as much as you can for a bit. If I were you, I'd have a bad headache and stop in bed."

"But I haven't a headache. I never do have headaches."

Sarella made a queer face, and sighed, then laughed.

"Anyway, you're not to be made to marry Mr. Gore," she said.

Mariquita looked enormously relieved, and began to express her grateful sense of Sarella's good offices.

"For that matter," Sarella cut in, "neither will Mr. Gore be made to marry you—so if you change your mind it will be no good. He thinks it would be wicked to marry you."

Mariquita perfectly understood that Sarella was trying to make her sorry, and only gave a cheerful little laugh.

"Then," she said, "I shall certainly not ask him. It would be quite useless to ask him to do anything wicked."

"The fact is," Sarella told her, "that you and he ought to be put in a glass case—two glass cases, you'd both of you be quite shocked at the idea of being in one—and labelled. It's a good thing you're unique. If other lovers were like you two, there'd be no marriages."

She got up, and prepared to return to her own room.

"Hulloa!" she said, "there's the auto. Your father's going off somewhere, and you can get up. Probably he is taking Gore away."

"Is Mr. Gore going away?"

"He'll have to. There's no one here for him to marry except Ginger; but no doubt you want him to become a monk."

"A monk! He hasn't the least idea of such a thing."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Sarella, instantly changing the sigh into a laugh. "How funny you people are who never condescend to see a joke."

"I didn't know," Mariquita confessed meekly, "that you had made one."