"
"Rose, what a darling you are!" Dick said, seizing her hands and
squeezing them hard.
"Oh," she laughed, wincing a little. "You couldn't do that to _her_ with
all her rings. I was just trying to _draw_ you! Now I've found out all I
want to know. You're dreadfully, frightfully in love with Miss Grant."
"Am I?" he asked. "Perhaps. I'm not sure. Only I see that there's
something rare about her, and she's too precious to be living as she
does, surrounded by a weird gang who all want to get something out of
her, or else to give her something she oughtn't to take. Like that
Indian chap, the Maharajah of Indorwana--confound the little beast! He's
tried to make her take a diamond star and a rope of pearls."
"I suppose she needn't, unless she wants to."
"Oh, I don't know, she's so good-natured, and somehow childlike. She had
both the things on at the Casino last night; said he insisted on lending
them to her, for luck, and she didn't like refusing them, as he almost
cried. And then there's that jeweller man from Paris--has a shop in the
Galerie Charles Trois. She strolled into his place to buy the gold bag
you saw on the beggars' table and he went wild about her. Cheek of him!
Sent her a bracelet she had to send back. How dare a fellow like that
have the impudence to fall in love with a girl like her?"
"Cats may look at kings, and I suppose kings embrace queens, don't they?
You needn't be so mad. You come from a democratic country, and Grandma
Carleton's father was a grocer.
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