"Since I was a little girl."

"Oh!--What is he?"

"A gentleman."

"Yes." The Englishman took the trouble again to put up his monocle and
take a fleeting glance across the table. "He looks it," he said. "I
mean, what does he do? Is he a capitalist like--like our host? Or is he
just getting to be a capitalist?"

"I hope he is," replied Mrs. Lancaster, with a twinkle in her eyes that
showed she enjoyed the Englishman's mystification. "He is engaged
in mining."

She gave a rosy picture of the wealth in the region from which Keith
came.

"All your men do something, I believe?" said the gentleman.

"All who are worth anything," assented Mrs. Lancaster.

"No wonder you are a rich people."

Something about his use of the adjective touched her.

"Our people have a sense of duty, too, and as much courage as any
others, only they do not make any to-do about it. I have a friend--a
_gentleman_--who drove a stage-coach through the mountains for a while
rather than do nothing, and who was held up one night and jumped from
the stage on the robber, and chased him down the mountains and
disarmed him."

"Good!" exclaimed the gentleman. "Nervy thing!"

"Rather," said Mrs. Lancaster, with mantling cheeks, stirred by what she
considered a reflection on her people. And that was not all he did. "He
had charge of a mine, and one day the mine was flooded while the men
were at work, and he went in in the darkness and brought the men
out safe."

"Good!" said the gentleman. "But he had others with him? He did not go
alone?"

"He started alone, and two men volunteered to go with him. But he sent
them back with the first group they found, and then, as there were
others, he waded on by himself to where the others were, and brought
them out, bringing on his shoulder the man who had attempted his life."

"Fine!" exclaimed the gentleman. "I've been in some tight places myself;
but I don't know about that. What was his name?"

"Keith."

"Oh!"

Her eyes barely glanced his way; but the Earl of Steepleton saw in them
what he had never been able to bring there.

The Englishman put up his monocle and this time gazed long at Gordon.

"Nervy chap!" he said quietly. "Won't you present me after dinner?"

In his slow mind was dawning an idea that, perhaps, after all, this
quiet American who had driven his way forward had found a baiting-place
which he, with all his titles and long pedigrees, could not enter. His
honest, outspoken admir