At The Relton Arms Part 15

Then she laughed, and he demanded the reason of her merriment.

"I was thinking how Joan once said that I should never be able to understand your nature, and that you would be wounding me half-a-dozen times a day," she explained, and laughed again.

"How absurd of her," he cried, and roared with laughter himself; "but then you know, childie, Joan has always been possessed with the idea that we were not born for each other."

"Could anything be more ridiculous?" said Norah; and they broke into a fresh peal of laughter, without any apparent reason for it.

A distant wail from the nursery summoned her presently, and Digby was left alone in the dining-room. He smoked two cigarettes in silence, with a complacent smile, and he delivered himself of his favorite exclamation as he rolled up a third.

"Good heavens!" he said out loud; "if it were not for habit what chance would there be for marriage? Next time I see Joan, I'll--"

But there he stopped.

THE END.