cles. They always thought any one with money could get
right in it here."

"Yes?" said Faraday, whose part of the conversation appeared to be
deteriorating into monosyllables.

"Well, you know, that's not the case at all. With all popper's money,
we've never been able to get a real good footing. It seems funny to
outsiders, especially as popper and mommer have never been divorced or
anything. We've just lived quietly right here in the city always. But,"
she said, looking tentatively at Faraday to see how he was going to take
the statement, "my father's a Northerner. He went back and fought in the
war."

"You must be very proud of that," said Faraday, feeling that he could
now hazard a remark with safety.

This simple comment, however, appeared to surprise the enigmatic Miss.
Ryan.

"Proud of it?" she queried, looking in suspended doubt at Faraday. "Oh,
of course I'm proud that he was brave, and didn't run away or get
wounded; but if he'd been a Southerner we would have been in society
now." She looked pensively at Faraday. "All the fashionable people are
Southerners, you know. We would have been, too, if we'd have been
Southerners. It's being Northerners that really has been such a
drawback."

"But your sympathies," urged Faraday, "aren't they with the North?"

Miss. Ryan ran the pearl fringe of her tea-gown through her large,
handsome hands. "I guess so," she said, indifferently, as if she was
considering the subject for the first time; "but you can't expect me to
have any very violent sympathies about a war that was dead and buried
before I was born."

"I don't believe you're a genuine Northerner, or Southerner either,"
said Faraday, laughing.

"I guess not," said the young lady, with the same placid indifference.
"An English gentleman whom I knew real well last year said the sympathy
of the English was all with the Southerners. He said they were the most
refined people in this country. He said they were thought a great deal
of in England?" She again looked at Faraday with her air of deprecating
query, as if she half expected him to contradict her.

"Who was this extraordinarily enlightened being?" asked Faraday.

"Mr. Harold Courtney, an elegant Englishman. They said his grandfather
was a Lord--Lord Hastings--but you never can be sure about those things.
I saw quite a good deal of him, and I sort of liked him, but he was
rather quiet. I think if he'd been an American we would have thought him
dull. Her