"No! Don't get on with him? I should think not, neither do I; but Arthur's not in the ve-ry least like him. Not nearly so good-looking; not like the Feltons, I should say, at all; like his mother. His cousin, though he's a big booby, is a good-looking fellow, and looks like a gentleman. Now that's just what Arthur does not look like." "And what is just what he does look like?" asked her companion, who took what he thought was a secret pleasure in hearing this unknown admirer of the beautiful woman who had captivated his fancy spoken of in depreciating terms. But he was quite mistaken. Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge discerned this amiable sentiment with perfect distinctness, and gave it all the nutriment to be supplied by the most consummate and dexterous coquetry. "H'm!" she said, with a bewitching air of thought and deliberation. "What does Arthur Felton look like? Very like a Yankee, and a little like a Jew;" and she laughed most musically. As Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge drove her gray ponies towards the little white town, the carriage passed, near a turn in one of the level shady roads, a bench placed between two tall slim trees. Between the bench and the road lay a broad pathway, with a grassy edge. A lady, simply-dressed, of a small slight figure, and whose face was bent downwards, but in whose air there was unmistakable refinement, was sitting on the bench, and leaning a little forward, was making marks on the ground with her parasol, less in idleness than in the abstraction of thought. As the ponies trotted merrily by, and their mistress laughed, rather loudly but musically, the lady looked up, and the eyes of the two women met. The gentleman who sat by the fair American, and who was on the side of the carriage nearest to the pathway, was so absorbed in the animated conversation being carried on between them, that he did not notice the solitary figure, nor see that anything had attracted his companion's attention. Indeed, the attraction was but momentary; the look had hardly been interchanged before the carriage whirled past Harriet Routh. She came forward upon the footpath, and looked after the fast-receding figure of her husband, as he bent deferentially towards the woman she had seen that morning, until she could see it no longer; and still stood there when the level shaded road was blank and empty. CHAPTER XXIV. ON THE BALCONY. "Are you going out this evening, Stewart?" asked Harriet Routh of her husband, as they sat together, after their dinner--which had not been a particularly lively meal--was removed. She did not look at him as she put the question, but gazed out of the window, holding back the curtain, while she spoke. Stewart Routh was examining the contents of a heap of letters which lay on the table before him, and did not answer for a moment. She repeated the question: "Are you going out anywhere this evening, Stewart?"