"

"I thought you were in Switzerland!" she exclaimed, as he crossed the
room and shook hands with her.

"I never got further than Paris," he said, smiling. "My brother has
gone instead, and I am going to follow your example and study the
beauties of English scenery."

Perhaps Greyshot opinion was more conciliated by the long talk with Mr.
Leslie Cunningham, M.P., than even by the Feltrino frogs. To have
Luke Raeburn's daughter suddenly thrust into the midst of their select
society at Lady Caroline's dinner was one thing they had one and
all shunned her. But when she proved to be, after all, clever and
fascinating, and original, when they knew that she had sat on Feltrino's
knee as a little child, above all, when they saw that Leslie Cunningham
was talking to her with mingled friendliness and deference, they veered
round. Politically, they hated Sir Michael Cunningham, but in society
they were pleased enough to meet him, and in Greyshot, naturally enough,
his son was a "lion." Greyshot made much of him during his stay at
Blachingbury, and he found it very convenient just then to be made much
of.

Hardly a day of that week passed in which he did not in some way meet
Erica. He met her in the park with her aunt; he sat next to her at an
evening concert; he went to the theater and watched her all through
"Hamlet," and came to the Fane-Smith's box between the acts. Yet,
desperately as he was in love, he could not delude himself with the
belief that she cared for him. She was always bright, talkative, frank,
even friendly, but that was all. Yet her unlikeness to the monotonously
same girls, whom he was in the habit of meeting, fascinated him more and
more each day. She was to go back to town on the Monday; on Friday it so
happened that she met Leslie Cunningham at a great flower show, and with
perfect unconsciousness piqued him almost beyond endurance. Now at last
he hoped to make her understand his admiration. They discussed "Hamlet,"
and he had just brought the conversation adroitly round to the love
scene in the third act, when Erica suddenly dashed his hopes to the
ground.

"Oh, how lovely!" she exclaimed, pausing before a beautiful exotic.
"Surely that must be an orchid?"

And the reluctant Leslie found the conversation drifting round to
botany, about which he knew little and cared less. Once more his
hopes were raised only to be frustrated. He was sitting besides Mrs.
Fane-Smith and Erica, and had managed to ste