“Your scheme,” he went on, “is a good one. Only—it involves the discovery of another girl.”

“Yes,” assented Miss Flossy, cheerfully.

“Well,” said the young man, “doesn’t it strike you that if I were to develop a sudden admiration for any one of these other young ladies whose charms I have hitherto neglected, it would come tardy off—lack artistic verisimilitude, so to speak?”

“Rather,” was Miss Flossy’s prompt and frank response; “especially as there isn’t one of them fit to flirt with.”

“Well, then, where am I to discover the girl?”

Miss Flossy untied and retied her shoe. Then she said, calmly:

“What’s the matter with—” a hardly perceptible hesitation—“me?

“With you?” Mr. Morpeth was startled out of his manners.

“Yes!”