an ought to wear a
good hat. It stamps him, Miss Gainsborough."

"Yours positively illuminates you. I could find the way by you on the
darkest night."

"With just a leetle touch of oil----" he admitted cautiously, not quite
sure how far she was serious in the admiration her eyes seemed to
express. "What have you been doing with yourself?" he asked, breaking
off after his sufficient confession.

"I've been drawing up advertisements of my own accomplishments." She sat
up suddenly. "Oh, why didn't I ask you to help me? You'd have made me
sound eligible and desirable, and handsome and spacious, and all the
rest of it. And I found nothing at all to say!"

"What are you advertising for?"

"Somebody who knows less French than I do. But I shall wait till we come
back now." She yawned a little. "I don't in the least want to earn my
living, you know," she added candidly, "and there's no way I could
honestly. I don't really know any French at all."

Sloyd regarded her with mingled pleasure and pain. His taste was for
more robust beauty and more striking raiment, and she--no, she was not
neat. Yet he decided that she would, as he put it, pay for dressing; she
wanted some process analogous to the thorough repair which he loved to
see applied to old houses. Then she would be attractive--not his sort,
of course, but still attractive.

"I wonder if you'll meet Madame Zabriska, the lady I let Merrion Lodge
to, and the gentleman with her, her uncle."

"I expect not. My cousin invites us for the funeral. It's on Saturday. I
suppose we shall stay the Sunday, that's all. And I don't suppose we
shall see anybody, to speak to, anyhow." Her air was very careless; the
whole thing was represented as rather a bore.

"You should make a longer visit--I'm sure his lordship will be delighted
to have you, and it's a charming neighborhood, a very desirable
neighborhood indeed."

"I dare say. But desirable things don't generally come our way, Mr
Sloyd, or at any rate not much of them."

"It's pretty odd to think it'd all be yours if--if anything happened to
Lord Tristram." His tone showed a mixture of amusement and awe. She was
what he saw--she might become My Lady! The incongruity reached his sense
of humor, while her proximity to a noble status nearly made him take off
his hat.

"It may be pretty odd," she said indolently, "but it doesn't do me much
good, does it?"

This last remark summed up the attitude which Cecily had always adopt