"Go on," she said. "Last of all?"
"Last of all, the love of a true woman."
"Oh!" she scoffed, with a little uptilt of the admirable chin. "Then love must come trailing along at the very end, after we have skimmed the cream from all the other milk pans in orderly succession."
"No," he rejoined gravely. "I put it clumsily—as I snatch purses. As a matter of sober fact, love sets the mile-stones along any human road that is worth traversing."
She glanced up at him and the blue eyes were dancing. Miss Alicia Adair knew no joy to compare with that of teasing, and it was not often that the fates gave her such a pliable subject.
"Tell me, Mr. Ford; is—is she pretty?"
"She is beautiful; the most beautiful woman in the world, Miss Adair."
"How fine! And, of course, she is a paragon of all the virtues?—an angel without the extremely inconvenient wings?"
"You have said it: and I have never doubted it from the moment I first laid eyes on her."
"Better and better," she murmured. Then: "She has money?"