answer to a plain question. Who are we?"

"I have just told you," said Beecher, whose confusion now made him
stammer and stutter at every word,--"I have just told you that your
father never spoke to me about his relations. I really don't know his
county, nor anything about his family."

"Then it only remains to ask, What are we? or, in easier words, Has my
father any calling or profession? Come, sir, so much you can certainly
tell me."

"Your father was a captain in a West India regiment, and, when I met him
first, he was a man about town,--went to all the races, made his bets,
won and lost, like the rest of us; always popular,--knew everybody."

"A 'sporting character,' in short,--is n't that the name newspapers give
it?" said she, with a malicious twinkle of the eye.

"By Jove! how you hit a thing off at once!" exclaimed Beecher, in honest
ecstasy at her shrewdness.

"So, then, I am at the end of the riddle at last," said she, musingly,
as she arose and walked the room in deep meditation. "Far better to have
told me so many a year ago; far better to have let me conform to this
station when I might have done so easily and without a pang!" A bitter
sigh escaped her at the last word, and Beecher arose and joined her.

"I hope you are not displeased with me, my dear Miss Davis," said he,
with a trembling voice; "I don't know what I'd not rather suffer than
offend you."

"You have _not_ offended me," said she, coldly.

"Well, I mean, than I 'd pain you,--than I 'd say anything that should
distress you. You know, after all, it was n't quite fair to push me so
hard."

"Are you forgetting, sir," broke she in, haughtily, "that you have
really told me next to nothing, and that I am left to gather from mere
insinuations that there is something in our condition your delicacy
shrinks from explaining?"

"Not a bit of it," chimed he in, quickly. "The best men in England are
on the turf, and a good book on the Oaks is n't within reach of the
income-tax. Your father's dealings are with all the swells in the
Peerage."

"So there is a partnership in the business, sir," said she, with a quiet
irony; "and is the Honorable Mr. Beecher one of the company?"

"Well--ha--I suppose--I ought to say yes," muttered he, in deep
confusion. "We do a stroke of work together now and then--on the square,
of course, I mean."

"Pray don't expose the secrets of the firm, sir. I am even more
interested than yourself that they should be co