"You seem to know that lady," said Elisabeth to me gently.
"Did I so seem?" I answered. "It is professional of all to smile in the East Room at a reception," said I.
"Then you do not know the lady?"
"Indeed, no. Why should I, my dear girl?" Ah, how hot my face was!
"I do not know," said Elisabeth. "Only, in a way she resembles a certain lady of whom we have heard rather more than enough here in Washington."
"Put aside silly gossip, Elisabeth," I said. "And, please, do not quarrel with me, now that I am so happy. To-night—"
"Nicholas," she said, leaning just a little forward and locking her hands more deeply in my arm, "don't you know you were telling me one time about the little brooch you were going to bring me—an Indian thing—you said it should be my—my wedding present? Don't you remember that? Now, I was thinking—"
I stood blushing red as though detected in the utmost villainy. And the girl at my side saw that written on my face which now, within the very moment, it had become her right to question! I turned to her suddenly.
"Elisabeth," said I, "you shall have your little brooch to-night, if you will promise me now to be ready and waiting for me at six. I will have the license."
It seemed to me that this new self of Elisabeth's—warmer, yielding, adorable—was slowly going away from me again, and that her old self, none the less sweet, none the less alluring, but more logical and questioning, had taken its old place again. She put both her hands on my arm now and looked me fairly in the face, where the color still proclaimed some sort of guilt on my part, although my heart was clean and innocent as hers.