uke to marry Miss
Trumpet, if you wish it," I said, "I think he knows it is a necessity
from what he said to me."

"Then I shall carry you up-stairs this afternoon out of harm's
way," she said, with her exquisite smile. "Berty always gives me a
dear little sitting-room next my room, and we can have a regular
school-girls' chat over the fire."

Nothing could have pleased me better. I would rather talk to this
dear lady than any Duke in the world.

After lunch some introductions were gone through.

"Now I am proud to be presented to you," said the aunt to Lady
Tilchester, with perfect composure. "We have heard a great deal of
you in our country, and my niece, Miss Trumpet, has always had the
greatest admiration for your photograph."

The niece, meanwhile, talked to me.

There is something so fresh and engaging about her that in a few
moments one almost forgot her terrible voice.

"Why, it does seem strange," she said, "with the veneration we have in
America for really old things, to hear the Duke" (she does not quite
say Dook, like the aunt. It sounds more like Juke) "call this castle
an old 'stone-heap.' I am just longing to see the place his ancestor
was beheaded upon in May, 1485. The Duke hardly seems to know about
it, but I have been led to expect, from the guide-book, that I should
see the blood on the stones."

The beautiful young man, Lord Luffton, now engaged her in
conversation, and as Lady Tilchester and I left the hall both he and
the Duke were escorting Miss Trumpet to the dais--no doubt to turn up
the carpet and search for the traditional blood upon the steps.

"They are the most wonderful nation," Lady Tilchester said, as she
linked her arm in mine. "Here is a girl looking as well bred as any
of us--more so than most of us--probably beautifully educated, and
accomplished, too, and whose father began as a common navvy or miner
out in the West. The mother is dead--she took in washing, Cordelia
says--and yet she was the sister of Miss Martina B. Cadwallader! How
on earth do they manage to look like this?"

"It is wonderful, certainly. It must be the climate," I hazarded.

"We cannot do it in England. Think of the terrible creature a girl
with such parentage would be here. Picture her ankles and hands! And
the self-consciousness, or the swagger, this situation would display!"

I thought of Mrs. Dodd and the Gurrage commercial relations generally.

"Yes, _indeed_," I said.

"They are so adaptab