t he dared speak so
differently from all the world about him. Then, six pictures away, she
heard her own name.

"Why, Flora Gilsey!" It was Ella's husky, boyish note. "I've been
looking for you all the evening! How d'y'do, Harry?" She waved her hand
at him. "Why, how d'y'do, Mrs. Britton? I wouldn't let papa go to supper
until I'd found you. 'Papa,' I said, 'wait; Flora and Harry will be
here.' Besides," she had quite reached Flora's side by this time and
communicated it in an impressive whisper, "I want you to meet my
Englishman." She looked over her shoulder, and largely beckoned to where
the blunt and florid Buller and his companion, with their backs to what
they were supposed to be looking at, were exchanging an anecdote of
infinite amusement.

Buller's expression came around slowly to his daughter's beckoning hand,
but the Englishman's face seemed to flash at the instant from what he
was enjoying to what was expected of him. In the flourish of
introductions, across and across, Flora found herself thinking the
reality less extraordinary than she had at first supposed. Now that Mr.
Kerr was fairly before her, presented to her, and taking her in with the
same lively, impersonal interest with which he took in the whole room,
"as if," she put it vexedly to herself, "I were a specimen poked at him
on the end of a pin," it stirred in her a vague resentment; and
involuntarily she held him up to Harry. The comparison showed him a
little worn, a little battered, a little too perfunctory in manner; but
his genial eyes, deep under threatening brows, made Harry's eyes seem to
stare rather coldly; and the fine form of his long, plain face, and the
sensitive line of his long thin lips made Harry's beauty look,--well,
how did it look? Hardly callous.

This mixed impression the two men gave her was disconcerting. She was
all the more ready to be wary of the stranger. She had begun with him in
the way she did with every one--instinctively throwing out a breastwork
of conversation from behind which she could observe the enemy. But
though he had blinked at it, he had not taken her up, nor helped her
out; but had merely stood with his head a little canted forward, as if
he watched her through her defenses.

"But San Francisco must seem so limited after London," she had wound up;
and the way he had considered it, a little humorously, down his long
nose, made her doubt the interest of cities to be reckoned in round
numbers.

"It's