“But now that I have met you I can readily understand.”

The same look through the glasses; sphinx-like, she seemed impervious both to depreciation and compliment.

“And she has left you alone all the morning?  I am afraid you must have been bored.”

“Thank you.  I had my work.”

It was an exquisite piece of art needlework.  Water-lilies and yellow irises on a purple ground.  She confessed it was her own design.

“And books?”

He took up Schlegel’s Philosophy of History in the original.

“You read German?”

“O yes.”

“And Italian? and French? and Sanscrit—­without doubt?”

“Not quite; but I have looked into Max Mueller, and know something of Monier Williams.”

And this was one of Lady Gayfeather’s girls!  Was this a new process, the last dodge in the perpetual warfare between maidens and mankind?

Harold looked at the prodigy.

In appearance she was quite unlike the conventional type of a London young lady of fashion.  Her fresh dimpled cheeks wore roses and a pearly bloom that spoke of healthy hours and a tranquil life; her dress was quiet almost to plainness; there was nothing modern in the style of her coiffure; Lobb would not have been proud of her boots.  Her fair white hands were innocent of rings; she wore no jewelry; there was no gold or silver about her, except for the gold-rimmed glasses that made so curious a contrast to her young face, with its merry eyes and frame of mutinous curls.

“You will not be angry,” said Harold earnestly, “if I tell you that you are not in the least what I expected to find you, Miss Fanshawe—­”

“Miss Fanshawe!” Her gay laugh was infectious.  “I’m afraid—­”

But just now the butler came in to say that the carriage was coming up the drive.  Harold went out to meet his mother, without noticing that the young lady also got up and hurriedly left the room.

“It’s just like you, you stupid boy!” said the heiress.  “Why did you give me no notice?”

“I meant to have written from Paris.  But it’s all for the best.  You were quite right.  She is perfectly charming.”

“Who?”

“Miss Fanshawe.  I have made her acquaintance.”

“In town?”

“No, here; in your own morning-room.”

“What!” The ejaculation contained volumes.  “Was there ever anything so annoying!  But it is all your fault for coming so unexpectedly.”

“What harm?  We introduced ourselves, Miss Fanshawe—­”

“Miss Fiddlesticks!  That’s Dolly Driver, your father’s cousin!”

“Indeed!  Then I wish I had made the acquaintance of my father’s cousins a little earlier in life.  Why have I been kept in ignorance of my relatives?  Where do they live?”

Mrs. Purling, instead of answering him, took him by the arm abruptly, as if to ask him some searching question; then suddenly checking herself, she said—­