ittle pretty I shall be sent home; but
if it should happen to me--ah! no such luck!--to be beautiful, then the
Contessa will introduce me, and everybody says I may go far--farther,
indeed, than even she has ever done. Where am I to sit? Beside you?"

"Here, please," said Lucy, trembling a little, and confounded by the
ease of this new actor on the scene, who spoke so frankly. She was
dressed in a little black frock up to her throat; her hair in great
shining bands coiled about her head, but not an ornament of any kind
about her. A little charity girl could not have been dressed more
plainly. But she showed no consciousness of this, nor, indeed, of
anything that was embarrassing. She looked round the table with a free
and fearless look. There was not about her any appearance of timidity,
even in respect to the Contessa. She included that lady in her
inspection as well as the others, and even made a momentary pause before
she sat down, to complete her survey. Lucy, who had on ordinary
occasions a great deal of gentle composure, and had sat with a Cabinet
Minister by her side without feeling afraid, was more disconcerted than
it would be easy to say by this young creature, of whom she did not know
the name. It was so small a party that a separate little conversation
with her neighbour was scarcely practicable, but the Contessa was
talking to Sir Tom with the confidential air of one who has a great deal
to say, and Lady Randolph on his other side was keeping a stern silence,
so that Lucy was glad to make a little attempt at her end of the table.

"You must have had a very fatiguing journey?" she said. "Travelling by
night, when you are not used to it----"

"But we are quite used to it," said the girl. "It is our usual way. By
land it is so much easier: and even at sea one goes to bed, and one is
at the other side before one knows."

"Then you are a good sailor, I suppose----"

"_Pas mal_," said the young lady. She began to look at Jock, and to
turn round from time to time to the elder Lady Randolph, who sat on the
other side of her. "They are not dumb, are they?" she asked. "Not once
have I heard them speak. That is very English, so like what one reads in
books."

"You speak English very well, Mademoiselle," said the Dowager suddenly.

The girl turned round and examined her with a candid surprise. "I am so
glad you do," she said calmly: a little _mot_ which brought the colour
to Lady Randolph's cheeks.

"A pupil of