ouple of
ladies visiting her. One of them I think you know. Do you remember on
shipboard a Miss Madden--an American, you know--very tall and fine, with
bright red hair--rather remarkable hair it was?"

"I remember the lady," said Thorpe, upon reflection, "but we didn't
meet." He could not wholly divest his tone of the hint that in those
days it by no means followed that because he saw ladies it was open to
him to know them.

Lord Plowden smiled a little. "Oh, you'll like her. She's great fun--if
she's in the mood. My mother and sister--I had them call on her in
London last spring--and they took a great fancy to her. She's got no
end of money, you know--at least a million and a half--dollars,
unfortunately. Her parents were Irish--her father made his pile in the
waggon business, I believe--but she's as American as if they'd crossed
over in--what was it, the 'Sunflower'?--no, the 'Mayflower.' Marvelous
country for assimilation, that America is! You remember what I told
you--it's put such a mark on you that I should never have dreamt you
were English."

Thorpe observed his companion, through a blue haze of smoke, in silence.
This insistence upon the un-English nature of the effect he produced was
not altogether grateful to his ears.

"The other one," continued Plowden, "is Lady Cressage. You'll be
interested in her--because a few years ago she was supposed to be the
most beautiful woman in London. She married a shocking bounder--he
would have been Duke of Glastonbury, though, if he had lived--but he was
drowned, and she was left poor as a church mouse. Oh! by the way!" he
started up, with a gleam of aroused interest on his face--"it didn't in
the least occur to me. Why, she's a daughter of our General Kervick. How
did he get on the Board, by the way? Where did you pick him up?"

Thorpe bent his brows in puzzled lines. "Why, you introduced me to him
yourself, didn't you?" he asked, slowly.

Plowden seemed unaffectedly surprised at the suggestion, as he turned it
over in his mind. "By George! I think you're right," he said. "I'd quite
forgotten it. Of course I did. Let me see--oh yes, I reconstruct it
readily enough now. Poor old chappie--he needs all he can get. He was
bothering her about money--that was it, I remember now--but what an
idiot I was to forget it. But what I was saying--there's no one else but
my mother and sister, and my brother Balder. He's a youngster--twenty or
thereabouts--and he purports to be rea