good as that?" asked Pracontal, laughing.

"The very best I ever heard from any not a born Briton."

"Well, I'm a Frenchman--or a half Frenchman--with some Italian and some
English blood, too, in me."

"Ah! I knew you must have had a dash of John Bull in you. No man ever
spoke such English as yours without it."

"Well, but my English temperament goes two generations back. I don't
believe my father was ever in England."

With this opening they talked away about national traits and
peculiarities: the Frenchman with all the tact and acute-ness travel and
much intercourse with life conferred; and the other with the especial
shrewdness that marks a Londoner. "How did you guess I was a Cockney?"
asked he, laughingly. "I don't take liberties with my H 's."

"If you had, it's not likely I'd have known it," said Pracontal. "But
your reference to town, the fidelity with which you clung to what
London would think of this, or say to that, made me suspect you to be a
Londoner; and I see I was right."

"After all, you Frenchmen are just as full of Paris."

"Because Paris epitomizes France, and France is the greatest of all
countries."

"I 'll not stand that. I deny it _in toto_."

"Well, I'll not open the question now, or maybe you'd make me give up
this blanket."

"No. I 'll have the matter out on fair grounds. Keep the blanket, but
just let me hear on what grounds you claim precedence for France before
England."

"I'm too unlucky in matters of dispute to-day," said Pracontal, sadly,
"to open a new discussion. I quarrelled with, perhaps, the best friend
I had in the world this morning for a mere nothing; and though there is
little fear that anything we could say to each other now would provoke
ill feeling between us, I 'll run no risks."

"By Jove! it must be Scotch blood is in you. I never heard of such
caution!"

"No, I believe my English connection is regular Saxon. When a man has
been in the newspapers in England, he need not affect secrecy or caution
in talking of himself. I figured in a trial lately; I don't know if you
read the cause. It was tried in Ireland--Count Bramleigh de Pracontal
against Bramleigh."

"What, are you Pracontal?" cried the stranger, starting to a sitting
posture. "Yes. Why are you so much interested?"

"Because I have seen the place. I have been over the property in
dispute, and the question naturally interests me."

"Ha! you know Castello, then?"

"Castello, or Bishop's Folly. I