“No, and yes,” replied Harry. “She has plenty of admirers, but no suitors; her friend, the rich Miss Arnott, though as ugly as a giraffe, carries the palm off from her.” “I find my countrymen as mercenary as foreigners, though without half the excuse,” said Derwent. “However, they can’t be blamed. Take my own case, for instance. Here am I with just income enough to support myself, and no prospect of being able to marry unless I select a rich wife, or what is even worse, go to work in earnest at my nominal profession! In such a case, one must either remain single or look out for an heiress. It is well enough to talk of ‘love in a cottage,’ but what can two people accustomed to the luxuries of life do in a house no bigger than a dog-kennel, and with but one servant, a maid-of-all-work. However, you must introduce me to this Miss Stanhope, I may as well flirt with her like the rest.” Thus spoke Derwent, one of whose affectations was to seem worse than he was. That evening accordingly saw Derwent numbered among the acquaintance of the belle of the season. She received him graciously, for in addition to a remarkably fine person, he had an air of high-breeding; while his countenance carried assurance of the owner being something more in both intellect and heart, than the ephemeral men of fashion around him. Indeed, Derwent possessed unusual ability, improved by book-study and travel. He talked to Miss Stanhope of England, and its lordly demesnes; of Paris, and its boulevards; of Germany, and the Rhine; of Italy, and her priceless works of art; of Greece, and her temples, even in decay the wonder of the spectator; and of Egypt, the parent of all, with her venerable Nile, her Luxor, her Philæ, and her pyramids, which though they have braved three thousand years, seem as if they will yet, in the minds of the awe-struck Arabs, conquer Time itself. Nor did he confine himself merely to these monuments of the past. He spoke of the manners, the religious and the social condition of the nations he had traveled among, from the starving operative of England to the free Bedouin of the desert. This style of conversation, so different from the empty small talk and insensate flattery with which her ears were usually greeted, arrested the attention of Miss Stanhope; for being of a cultivated mind herself, she not only appreciated what he said, but felt it as a compliment to be talked to thus. In a word, Derwent managed to monopolize her evening, and when the hour of retiring came neither imagined it was half so late.