e be who is led hither to reside by you, Mr. Harry!'

'Mine? No; there's the bother,' he answered, with unfeigned chagrin.
'Beckley isn't Elburne property, you know. It belongs to old Mrs.
Bonner, Rose's grandmama.'

'Oh!' interjected the Countess, indifferently.

'I shall never get it--no chance,' Harry pursued. 'Lost my luck with the
old lady long ago.' He waxed excited on a subject that drew him from his
shamefacedness. 'It goes to Juley Bonner, or to Rosey; it's a toss-up
which. If I'd stuck up to Juley, I might have had a pretty fair chance.
They wanted me to, that's why I scout the premises. But fancy Juley
Bonner!'

'You couldn't, upon your honour!' rhymed the Countess. (And Harry
let loose a delighted 'Ha! ha!' as at a fine stroke of wit.) 'Are we
enamoured of a beautiful maiden, Senor Harry?'

'Not a bit,' he assured her eagerly. 'I don't know any girl. I don't
care for 'em. I don't, really.'

The Countess impressively declared to him that he must be guided by her;
and that she might the better act his monitress, she desired to hear the
pedigree of the estate, and the exact relations in which it at present
stood toward the Elburne family.

Glad of any theme he could speak on, Harry informed her that Beckley
Court was bought by his grandfather Bonner from the proceeds of a
successful oil speculation.

'So we ain't much on that side,' he said.

'Oil!' was the Countess's weary exclamation. 'I imagined Beckley Court
to be your ancestral mansion. Oil!'

Harry deprecatingly remarked that oil was money.

'Yes,' she replied; 'but you are not one to mix oil with your Elburne
blood. Let me see--oil! That, I conceive, is grocery. So, you are
grocers on one side!'

'Oh, come! hang it!' cried Harry, turning red.

'Am I leaning on the grocer's side, or on the lord's?'

Harry felt dreadfully taken down. 'One ranks with one's father,' he
said.

'Yes,' observed the Countess; 'but you should ever be careful not to
expose the grocer. When I beheld my brother bow to you, and that your
only return was to stare at him in that singular way, I was not aware of
this, and could not account for it.'

I declare I'm very sorry,' said Harry, with a nettled air. 'Do just let
me tell you how it happened. We were at an inn, where there was an
odd old fellow gave a supper; and there was your brother, and another
fellow--as thorough an upstart as I ever met, and infernally impudent.
He got drinking, and wanted to fight us. N