e
to her surroundings as regal as it was sincere. Indeed, the two
simplest people at that party (famous for years in country-house
annals as the most brilliant gathering of well-mixed rank and talent
that ever fought with that arch-enemy of the leisured classes,
_Ennui_, and throttled him successfully for seventy-two hours) were
the wife of an American attorney-at-law and the eldest son of
England's greatest duke--the most eligible _parti_ in the United
Kingdom, a youth of head-splitting lineage and fabulous possessions.

They sat together on the floor of a chintz-hung breakfast room,
spinning peg-tops all over the polished wax, for two rainy hours
before dinner (which function was delayed half an hour to please them,
to the awed wonder of the lesser guests and the apoplectic amusements
of the young peer's father) and were the only occupants of the great
house, except three collie pups who sat with them, to see nothing odd
in the performance, though Saint-Saens was come over from Paris to
accompany Margarita on the piano and the princess of a royal family
was dressed in her palpitating best for the best reason in the world
not unconnected with the son of an historic house!

Du Maurier drew a picture of it for _Punch_ in his very best manner
(it went the length and breadth of England) and then, at Roger's grave
request, withdrew it from the all-but-printed page and gracefully
presented him with it. It was wonderfully characteristic of both of
them and prettily done on both sides, to my old-fashioned way of
thinking.

Well, it was after that top-spinning that Margarita and the Fortunate
Youth jumped up carelessly, kicked away the tops, and raced each other
to the noble music room, a magnificent gallery, all oak and Romneys
and Lelys, and there the Fortunate Youth sat down at the piano
(Saint-Saens standing amused in the curve of it) and began to play the
accompaniment of one of Tosti's great popular waltz-songs. It is no
longer in favour, your waltz-song, though I have lived through a
sufficient number of musical fashions to be reasonably certain of its
return to power, some day, but then it was at its height, and
subalterns hummed them to military bands, from Simla to Quebec, and
soft eyes dropped under those subalterns' right shoulders and soft
hearts melted as the chorus was repeated by request, and the dawn
found them still dancing--bless the happy days!

Now Providence had seen fit (displaying thus an astonishin