bright gayety, her frank cordiality, the good-humored comradeship and absence of stiffness, untainted by vulgarity. For, although Bijou was not high-bred, distinguished, or clever, she was a girl of real refinement, and he had the wit to see it. Her merry tongue and generous and affectionate heart, neither chilled nor hardened yet by contact with the world, were very attractive, and it is just possible that he felt the influence of her piquantly-pretty face. At any rate, he had found a great number of imperative reasons for going to Brown's, when one morning, as he was opening the little wicket-gate that admitted him to their croquet-field, he saw something that gave him an unpleasant shock. It was a buggy in front of the door, in which sat Bijou, charmingly arrayed, smiling upon a gentleman who had just helped her in and was only deterred from taking the seat waiting for him by her calling out, "Stop, till I fix my skirts and put up my parasol," the gentleman being his cousin, Mr. Edward Plummer, _alias_ Drummond. The sight of Mr. Plummer enraged him. Bijou's cheerful air did not improve matters, and for the first time he felt irritated at her American speech and accent. "'Fix my skirts,'" he quoted discontentedly, as he watched them drive off, and then, after a moment's indecision, he stalked angrily up to the front door, pulled the bell fiercely, and asked to see Mr. Brown. He was almost immediately ushered into the library, where Mr. Brown was sitting. "Good-morning, sir. I am glad to see you. I am sorry to say that Bijou is out. She has gone driving with our guest: an English guest, by the way, --Mr. Drummond. He came on with us from New York, and has been here ever since, except the last two weeks, which he has spent in Chicago," said Mr. Brown. "That's what I've come about," blurted out Mr. Ramsay, the moment there was a pause. "His name isn't Drummond at all: it is Plummer. And he isn't fit to be a guest in any decent house, and I've come to tell you so and have you give him the sack and put him to the door at once. Excuse me meddling, but you have been very kind to me and received me most hospitably, and I am not going to see you taken in by a rascal and a blackguard." Mr. Brown was shocked, but did not show it. He prided himself on being very logical and dispassionate and judicial, and was privately convinced that he would have greatly adorned the legal profession if Fate had been kinder. Besides, Mr. Drummond was his guest and there by his invitation, which to his mind was strong presumptive proof that Mr. Ramsay's charges were without foundation. "Grave accusations these, Mr. Ramsay,--very grave accusations. I trust you are making them upon some better grounds than mere personal prejudice or idle rumor, if you expect me to believe them. Not that I mean any discourtesy to you, sir, in saying this," he said, in his roundest, most impressive tones.