hionable quarter,
or with ultra fashionable people, but she was, on all occasions, they
heard, beautifully dressed and beautifully--if a little heavily--hung
with gauds and gems, her rings being said to be quite amazing and
suggesting an impassioned lavishness on the part of Uncle James. London,
having become inured to American marvels--Milly's bit of it--accepted
and enjoyed Uncle James and all the sumptuous attributes of his Dakota.

English people would swallow anything sometimes, Mrs. Monson commented
sagely, and yet sometimes they stared and evidently thought you were
lying about the simplest things. Milly's corner of South Kensington had
gulped down the Dakota uncle. Her managing in this way, if there was no
uncle, was too clever and amusing. She had left her mother at home to
scrimp and save, and by hook or by crook she had contrived to get a
number of quite good things to wear. She wore them with such an air of
accustomed resource that the jewels might easily--mixed with some
relics of her mother's better days--be of the order of the clever little
Parisian diamond crescent. It was Milly's never-laid-aside manner which
did it. The announcement of her union with Sir Arthur Bowen was received
in certain New York circles with little suppressed shrieks of glee. It
had been so sharp of her to aim low and to realise so quickly that she
could not aim high. The baronetcy was a recent one, and not unconnected
with trade. Sir Arthur was not a rich man, and, had it leaked out,
believed in Uncle James. If he did not find him all his fancy painted,
Milly was clever enough to keep him quiet. She was, when all was said
and done, one of the American women of title, her servants and the
tradespeople addressed her as "my lady," and with her capacity
for appropriating what was most useful, and her easy assumption of
possessing all required, she was a very smart person indeed. She
provided herself with an English accent, an English vocabulary, and an
English manner, and in certain circles was felt to be most impressive.

At an afternoon function in the country Mrs. Vanderpoel had met Lady
Bowen. She had been one of the few kindly ones, who in the past had
given an occasional treat to Milly Jones for her girlhood's sake. Lady
Bowen, having gathered a small group of hearers, was talking volubly to
it, when the nice woman entered, and, catching sight of her, she swept
across the room. It would not have been like Milly to fail to see an