mplexion and delicate high-bred features,
bore himself like a noble of the old school. Westonhaugh beside him
looked washed-out and deathly, Kildare was too coarsely healthy, and
Ghyrkins and I, representing different types of extreme plainness,
served as foils to all three.

I watched Miss Westonhaugh while Isaacs was speaking. She had evidently
heard the whole story, for her expression showed beforehand the emotion
she expected to feel at each point. Her colour came and went softly, and
her eyes brightened with a warm light beneath the dark brows that
contrasted so strangely yet delightfully with the mass of flaxen-white
hair. She wore something dark and soft, cut square at the neck, and a
plain circlet of gold was her only ornament. She was a beautiful
creature, certainly; one of those striking-looking women of whom
something is always expected, until they drop quietly out of youth into
middle age, and the world finds out that they are, after all, not
heroines of romance, but merely plain, honest, good women; good wives
and good mothers who love their homes and husbands well, though it has
pleased nature in some strange freak to give them the form and feature
of a Semiramis, a Cleopatra, or a Jeanne d'Arc.

"Dear me, how very interesting!" exclaimed Mr. Ghyrkins, looking up from
his hill mutton as Isaacs finished, and a little murmur of sympathetic
applause went round the table.

"I would give a great deal to have been through all that," said Lord
Steepleton, slowly proceeding to sip a glass of claret.

"Just think!" ejaculated John Westonhaugh. "And I was entertaining such
a Sinbad unawares!" and he took another green pepper from the dish his
servant handed him.

"Upon my word, Isaacs," I said, "some one ought to make a novel of that
story; it would sell like wildfire."

"Why don't you do it yourself, Griggs?" he asked. "You are a pressman,
and I am sure you are welcome to the whole thing."

"I will," I answered.

"Oh do, Mr. Griggs," said the young lady, "and make it wind up with a
tiger-hunt. You could lay the scene in Australia or the Barbadoes, or
some of those places, and put us all in--and kill us all off, if you
like, you know. It would be such fun." Poor Miss Westonhaugh!

"It is easy to see what you are thinking about most, Miss Westonhaugh,"
said Lord Steepleton: "the tigers are uppermost in your mind; and
therefore in mine also," he added gallantly.

"Indeed, no--I was thinking about Mr. Isaac