upled with my Aunt's eagerness for amusement,
that our presence would long escape detection. As a fact, before the
end of the first week we were inundated with invitations, many of
which it was impossible to decline; and I finally gave up the struggle,
and suffered myself to become a facile tool in the hands of my friends
after night-fall, reserving merely the day-time for my financial
investigations. I was the more willing to submit to this social demand,
because I had a hope that I might meet with Mr. Prime at some of the
houses to which we were asked. But though I constantly recognized, with
a sense of danger that was yet delicious, faces that I had become
familiar with down-town, his was never among them. I made no inquiries,
but the mystery of his absence was finally explained.

"Miss Harlan," said my hostess to me at a brilliant dinner-party, "I had
hoped to be able to present to you this evening my friend Mr. Francis
Prime, who is altogether charming; but he writes me that he is not going
anywhere this winter: he has in fact given himself up for the time being
to business, and cannot break his rule even for me. Everybody is
laughing over the idea of his doing anything except make himself
agreeable. As he isn't here, let me tell you he is the worst flirt in
town; and we all rather hope he won't succeed, for he fills his niche to
perfection,--which is paying him a high compliment, I think. But there
are other attractive men in the world besides Mr. Prime, and I am going
to ask you, by and by, to tell me your opinion of our new Englishman,
who is to take you in to dinner. He is only the Honorable Ernest Ferroll
at present, but when his uncle dies he will be Duke of Clyde, my dear,
and _on dit_ he is looking for a wife."

I found the Honorable Ernest decidedly agreeable. He had a fine figure,
was six feet high, with blue eyes and a luxuriant chestnut beard. In his
thirty years he had lived and travelled everywhere, reserving the
States, as he called them, for a final jaunt preparatory to settling
down. He was making merely a flying trip through the seaboard cities
after a preliminary canter at Newport, previous to doing California and
some big hunting in the "Rockies;" but later he intended to return and
spend a season in New York and Boston society. His name was, for the
moment, on every one's lips, and there was much quiet maternal inquiry
as to how long the old peer was likely to last; for the Honorable Ernest
wa