ich he kept on the blushing face of Miss
Eaton--impertinently, I thought.

"Mrs. Eaton gave me a little punch with the point of her parasol, after
he had passed.

"'Struck! undoubtedly struck. Don't you think so?'

"'Oh, mamma, how can you! I'm sure it was Miss Crawford his Highness was
admiring.'

"'But how do you know it is his Highness,' I inquired.

"'How? Why, look at him. His very tread has nobility in it. You have not
been travelling abroad long enough to distinguish at a glance. In order
to know the aristocracy of a nation one must have mingled with it on
equal terms. Now that gentleman is a royal duke, I take it. Lucy, dear,
if you could manage to be speaking French when he comes this way again.
Perhaps Miss Crawford knows enough to give you countenance. I am a
little--just a little--out of practice since my passion for the Spanish.
Noble language, isn't it, Miss? Something so dignified--so rolling--so
rich in sound. Here comes Mr. James Harrington, handsome as ever, but
wanting, as I may suggest, in the grand air. See with what modest
appreciation he passes the duke.'

"The vulgarity of this woman did more to lift the cloud from my heart
than a hundred arguments could have done. I knew young Harrington well
enough to feel that he was safe with a woman like this, though the
mother of an angel. A sense of amusement stole over me, and I awaited
his approach, cured of the anxiety that had, for a time, made me so
wretched.

"If I had calculated on a second exhibition of snobbery after Harrington
joined us, Mrs. Eaton disappointed me. I think she held the young
gentleman in too much awe for a free exercise of the vanity that was in
her. She did not even mention 'the duke,' and I remarked that this
personage kept on another portion of the deck while James was with us.

"How beautiful are the banks of this river, as we go nearer and nearer
its source! It is strange that I, an American, born in a land which
spreads the broadest prairies on earth to the breeze and the sunshine,
should have caught my first glimpse of one in the heart of Spain. Here
mile after mile, the Guadalquiver, spread through vast plains of tall
grass and wild flowers, which sweeps away from you on either hand in a
sea of billowy green touched with purple and crimson, gleams now and
then where the tall flowers grow thickest, and swayed by the wind till
the waving grass seems to heave and roll like the ocean itself.

"I had left my compani