"Of course--I forgot you know nothing of her. She wrote me from Ambleside--I infer she has been 'doing' England; and as her credentials were unimpeachable I asked her down. She has inherited a part of the northern estate and was brought up in the neighboring town of Rosewater--the American names are too silly. She seems quite _comme il faut_ and is remarkably handsome. I detest Americans, as you know, but there certainly is something in blood. I liked her at once. She looks clever, and is quite off the type--none of the usual fluff. If she doesn't bore me I shall keep her here for a while." "I wish you would adopt her," he said, fondly. "I shouldn't be jealous, for I hate to think of you so much alone." He rose and kissed her lightly on the forehead, experience teaching him to avoid a stray hair from the carefully built coiffure. "I'll see if I can waylay Julia on the stairs; she is always late. Keep from eleven to twelve for me to-morrow morning. I want to tell you about the campaign. It was a glorious fight!" His eyes sparkled at the memory of it. "I felt as if every bit of me had never been alive at once before. My opponent was a splendid chap. It meant something to beat him. The other side was in a rage!--more than once yelled for half an hour after I took the platform. When I finished they yelled again for half an hour--to a different tune." His slight, thin, rather graceless figure seemed suddenly to expand, even to grow taller. Some hidden magnetism burst from him like an aura, and his cold pasty face and light gray eyes flamed into positive beauty. "It was glorious! Glorious! I was intoxicated--I could have reeled, little as they suspected it. I wouldn't part for a second with the certainty that I am the biggest figure in young England to-day. I hate to sleep and forget it. If I cultivated modesty I should renounce one of the exquisite pleasures of life. Humility is a superstition. The man who doesn't weed it out is an ass. To be young, well-born, with money enough, a brain instead of a mere intelligence, an essential leader of men--Good God! Good God!" Then he subsided and blushed, jerked up his shoulders and laughed. "Well--I never let myself go to any one but you," he said. "And I won't inflict _you_ any longer." IV "I wish the old homes of England had electric lights," thought Miss Otis, with a sigh. There were four candles on the dressing-table, two on the mantel-shelf; beyond the radius of their light the room was barely visible. She carried one of the candles over to the cheval-glass and held it above her head, close to her face, low on either side.