“You're really very beautiful,” she said. “Do you know it?”

Cynthia's only answer to this was a blush. She wondered if all city girls were like Miss Duncan.

“I was determined to come up and speak to you the first chance I had,” Janet continued. “I've been making up stories about you.”

“Stories!” exclaimed Cynthia, drawing away her hands.

“Romances,” said Miss Duncan—“real romances. Sometimes I think I'm going to be a novelist, because I'm always weaving stories about people that I see people who interest me, I mean. And you look as if you might be the heroine of a wonderful romance.”

Cynthia's breath was now quite taken away.

“Oh,” she said, “I—had never thought that I looked like that.”

“But you do,” said Miss Duncan; “you've got all sorts of possibilities in your face—you look as if you might have lived for ages.”

“As old as that?” exclaimed Cynthia, really startled.

“Perhaps I don't express myself very well” said the other, hastily; “I wish you could see what I've written about you already. I can do it so much better with pen and ink. I've started quite a romance already.”