Mrs. Easterfield laughed.  “Come pick up my roses,” she said.  “I must go in.”

“It is like making love,” said Locker as he picked up the flowers, “charming, but prickly.”  At this moment he started.  “Who is that?” he exclaimed.

Mrs. Easterfield turned.  “Oh, that is Monsieur Emile Du Brant.  He is one of the secretaries of the Austrian legation.  He is to spend a week with us.  Suppose you take my flowers into the house and I will go to meet him.”

Claude Locker, his arms folded around a mass of thorny roses, and a pair of scissors dangling from one finger, stood and gazed with savage intensity at the dapper little man—­black eyes, waxed mustache, dressed in the height of fashion—­who, with one hand outstretched, while the other held his hat, advanced with smiles and bows to meet the lady of the house.  Locker had seen him before; he had met him in Washington; and he had received forty dollars for a poem of which this Austrian young person was the subject.

He allowed the lady and her guest to enter the house before him, and then, like a male Flora, he followed, grinding his teeth, and indulging in imprecations.

“He will have to put on some other kind of clothes,” he muttered, “and perhaps he may shave and curl his hair.  That will give me a chance to see her before lunch.  I do not know that she expected me to begin to-day, but I am going to do it.  I have a clear field so far, and nobody knows what may happen to-morrow.”

As Locker stood in the hallway waiting for some one to come and take his flowers, or to tell him where to put them, he glanced out of the back door.  There, to his horror, he saw that Mrs. Easterfield had conducted her guest through the house, and that they were now approaching the tennis ground, where Professor Lancaster and Miss Asher were standing with their rackets in their hands, while Mr. and Mrs. Fox were playing chess under the shade of a tree.

“Field open!” he exclaimed, dropping the roses and the scissors.  “Field clear!  What a double-dyed ass am I!” And with this he rushed out to the tennis ground; Mrs. Easterfield did not play.

Before Mrs. Easterfield returned to the house she stood for a moment and looked at the tennis players.

“Olive and three young men,” she said to herself; “that will do very well.”

A little before luncheon Claude Locker became very uneasy, and even agitated.  He hovered around Olive, but found no opportunity to speak to her, for she was always talking to somebody else, mostly to the newcomer.  But she was a little late in entering the dining-room, and Locker stepped up to her in the doorway.

“Is this your handkerchief?” he asked.

“No,” said she, stopping; “isn’t it yours?”

“Yes,” he replied, “but I had to have some way of attracting your attention.  I love you so much that I can scarcely see the table and the people.”

“Thank you,” she said, “and that is all for the next twenty-four hours.”