brought him within the light of
Genevieve's _beaux yeux_. The fable of being the family friend was quite
shattered. Faraday had capitulated.

Nearly two months after the dinner, when rumors of Genevieve Ryan's
engagement to Lord Hastings were in lively circulation, Faraday called
at the lion-guarded mansion on California Street, and, in answering to
his regulation request for the ladies, received the usual unintelligible
Chinese rejoinder, and was shown into the gold drawing-room. There,
standing in front of a long mirror, looking at her skirts with an eye of
pondering criticism, was Miss Genevieve, dressed to go out. She caught
sight of him in the glass, turned abruptly, and came forward, a color in
her face.

"Is that you?" she said, holding out her hand. "I am so glad. I thought
it was somebody else." Having thus, with her customary candor,
signified to Faraday that she was expecting Lord Hastings, she sat down
facing him, and said, abruptly, "Why haven't you been here for so long?"

Faraday made the usual excuses, and did quail before her cold and steady
eyes.

"That's rather funny," she said, as he concluded "for now you're used to
your new position, and it must go more easily, and yet you have less
time to see your friends than you did at first."

Faraday made more excuses, and wondered that she should take a cruel
pleasure in such small teasing.

"I thought p'r'aps," she said, still regarding him with an unflinching
scrutiny, her face grave and almost hard, "that you'd begun to find us
too Western, that the novelty had worn off, that our ways were
too--too--what shall I say?--too wild and woolly."

A flush of anger ran over Faraday's face. "Your suppositions were
neither just nor true," he said, coldly.

"Oh, I don't know," she continued, with a careless movement of her head,
and speaking in the high, indifferent tone that a woman adopts when she
wishes to be exasperating; "you needn't get mad. Lots of Eastern people
feel that way. They come out here and see us constantly, and make
friends with us, and then go back and laugh at us, and tell their
friends what barbarians we are. It's customary, and nothing to be
ashamed of."

"Do you suppose that I am that sort of an Eastern person?" asked
Faraday, quietly.

"I don't know," she said, doubtfully. "I didn't think you were at first,
but now----"

"But now you do. Why?"

"Because you don't come here any more," she said, with a little air of
triumph.