“So I am entirely transparent, am I? I present no secrets to your gaze?” Mosscrop spoke like one in whom pique and a sense of the comical struggled for mastery. “Then I cannot do better than beg you to tell me some things about myself. Why, for example, do I sit here patiently and submit to be laughed at, heckled, satirised, and generally bully-ragged by a young lady, whose title to do these things is not in the least apparent to me?” “Why, don’t you remember? You’re waiting for papa.” “And incidentally providing his offspring, in the _interim_, with much harmless and chaste entertainment,” put in Mosscrop, drily. “I am charmed to have diverted you so successfully. It occurs to me, since you are so readily amused, that you must have been wofully bored before I made my happy appearance.” “Oh, quite the contrary,” exclaimed the girl, with a sudden stress in her tone, which hinted that this was what she had been waiting for. She opened the volume, as she spoke, at the place marked by her finger. “I was reading in the Peerage, you know. It is a most entrancing book. I am never dull when I am reading about earls and things.” “I have heard that the work enjoys a remarkable popularity in your country,” David remarked, sourly. “There is such romance in it!” she went on, in mock rhapsody; “it makes such appeals to the imagination! It puts you at once in an atmosphere of chivalry, of knightly adventures and exploits, of tournaments and chain-armour, and courts of love----” “And of divorce, and bankruptcy, too,” he interposed. “Don’t forget those.” The girl looked grave for a moment, and nodded her head as if in relenting apology. Then she recovered her high spirits by as swift a transition. “And such splendid old names as you get, too!” she continued, with her eyes on the open page. “Listen to this, for example. Could anything be finer?” _DRUMPIPES, Earl of. (Sir Archibald-Coro-nach-Dugal-Strathspey-Malcolm- Linkhaw) Viscount Dunfugle of Inverdummie, and Baron Pilliewillie of Slug-Angus, Morayshire, all in the peerage of Scotland, and a Baronet of Nova Scotia. Born August 24th, 1866. Succeeded his grandfather as 19th Earl January 10th, 1888. Married May 2nd, 1890, Janet-Eustasia-Marjory, 3rd daughter of the Master of Craigie-whaup by his wife, the Hon. Tryphena Pincock (who deceased March 6th, 1879), elder daughter of the 4th Baron Dubb of Kilwhissel. Seat, Skirl Castle, near Lossiewink, Elgin. Club, Wanderers._ She read it all with marked deliberation and distinctness of utterance. When she finished, silence reigned for some time on the balcony. “Well, am I not right?” she asked at last, lifting her head, and flashing the full richness of her black eyes into Mosscrop’s face. “Don’t you admit the inspiration of such names?” David answered in a hesitating, dubious manner. “I am more curious about the source--and scope--of _your_ inspiration,” he said.