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To prevent her peeping over my shoulder at the paper, as she usually did, I laid it on the table; but her quick eye had already read the great headlines. "Great Battle. British officers killed. Oh, let me see, Seer Marcous." "No, dear," said I. "Go and eat your breakfast." She looked at me strangely.

McMurray says funny things and makes me laugh. But I love my darling Seer Marcous best. And here is one for Seer Marcous from his How can I refuse? But I wish she were here. 31st October. I did not sleep last night. I have done no work to-day. The Renaissance has receded into a Glacial Epoch wherein, as far as its humanity is concerned, I have not a tittle of interest. I sought refuge in the club.

"They came to Aziza-Zaza's wedding," said Carlotta, behind her handkerchief. "But all our ladies do this when they want to make themselves look nice. And I have put on this nasty thing that hurts me, just to please Seer Marcous." I felt I had been brutal. She must have spent hours over her adornment. Yet I could not have taken her out into the street.

Then suddenly, as if inspired, after a few minutes' silent reflection: "Seer Marcous, is this the marriage market?" "The what?" I gasped. "The marriage market. I read it in a book, yesterday. Miss Griggs gave it me to read aloud Tack Thack " "Thackeray?" "Ye-es. They come here to sell the young girls to men who want wives." She edged away from me, with a little movement of alarm.

I released myself swiftly from her indecorous demonstration. "You mustn't do things like that," said I, severely. "In England, young women are only allowed to embrace their grandfathers." Carlotta looked at me wide-eyed, with the fox-terrier knitting of the forehead. "But you are so good to me, Seer Marcous," she said. "I hope you'll find many people good to you, Carlotta," I answered.

Carlotta listened patiently until I had ended, and then she said, with a little sigh: "You cannot understand, Seer Marcous, darling. I have been thinking of my little baby and the angels and all the angels are like you." To cover the embarrassment my modesty underwent, I laughed and drew the picture of myself with long flaxen hair and white wings.

You are Marcus or Sir Marcus to everybody. To me you are always Seer Marcous. Seer Marcous, darling," she half whispered after a pause. "Once I did not know the difference between a god and a mortal. It was only that morning when I woke up " "You took me for a saint in a dressing-gown," said I. "It's the same thing," she retorted.

I declare I have thought myself allied to that man for twenty years in bonds of the most intimate friendship, and he has never so much as mentioned you to me." "Seer Marcous says that Pasquale is a bad lot," remarked Carlotta, with an air of sapience, after a sip of orangeade, a revolting beverage which she loves to drink at her meals.

For my boy's sake, I would take her in but his mother knows nothing about it save that the boy is dead. It would kill her." The tears rolled down the old man's cheeks. I grasped him by the hand. "She shall come to no manner of harm beneath my roof," said I. Carlotta was waiting for me in the drawing-room. She looked at me in a perplexed, pitiful way. "Seer Marcous?" "Yes?" "Am I to marry him?"

"It is like waking into heaven to see your face, Seer Marcous, darling," she whispered. "I hope heaven is peopled by a better-looking set of fellows," I said. "Hou!" laughed Carlotta. "Don't you know you are beautiful?" "You mustn't throw an old jest in my teeth, Carlotta," said I, and I reminded her how she had once screamed with laughter when I had told her I was very beautiful.