rize of an English man-of-war by storm; all the profit,
however, being his. This he proved with a courteous clasp of the girl and
a show of the salute on her cheek, which he presumed to take at the
night's farewell. 'She's my tonic,' he proclaimed heartily. She seemed to
Livia somewhat unstrung and toneless. The separation from her brother in
the morning might account for it. And a man of the admiral's age could be
excused if he exalted the girl. Senility, like infancy, is fond of plain
outlines for the laying on of its paints. The girl had rugged brows, a
short nose, red hair; no young man would look at her twice. She was
utterly unlike Chillon! Kissing her hand to Henrietta from the steps of
the hotel, the girl's face improved.

Livia's little squire, Sir Meeson Corby, ejaculated as they were driving
down the main street, 'Fleetwood's tramp! There he goes. Now see, Miss
Fakenham, the kind of object Lord Fleetwood picks up and calls
friend!--calls that object friend! . . But, what? He has been to a tailor
and a barber!'

'Stop the coachman. Run, tell Mr. Woodseer I wish him to join us,' Livia
said, and Sir Meeson had to thank his tramp for a second indignity. He
protested, he simulated remonstrance,--he had to go, really feeling a
sickness.

The singular-looking person, whose necessities or sense of the decencies
had, unknown to himself and to the others, put them all in motion that
day, swung round listening to the challenge to arms, as the puffy little
man's delivery of the countess's message sounded. He was respectably
clad, he thought, in the relief of his escape from the suit of clothes
discarded, and he silently followed Sir Meeson's trot to the carriage.
'Should have mistaken you for a German to-day, sir,' the latter said, and
trotted on.

'A stout one,' Woodseer replied, with his happy indifference to his
exterior.

His dark lady's eyes were kindly overlooking, like the heavens. Her fair
cousin, to whom he bowed, awakened him to a perception of the spectacle
causing the slight, quick arrest of her look, in an astonishment not
unlike the hiccup in speech, while her act of courtesy proceeded. At once
he was conscious of the price he paid for respectability, and saw the
Teuton skin on the slim Cambrian, baggy at shoulders, baggy at seat,
pinched at the knees, short at the heels, showing outrageously every spot
where he ought to have been bigger or smaller. How accept or how reject
the invitation to drive in