Sir Robert smiled. He possessed, alas! no sense of humor whatsoever, but somehow or other he liked what he termed the quaint ways of this youthful friend. “Laurence,” he proceeded to expound, “is a curious girl. Not English in the least. Of course you know that we are one of those Catholic families who have never given up the ‘Old Faith,’ but that has nothing to do with it. Our blood is British--just so--and where that child has fished her very peculiar characteristics from is more than I can explain. At any rate, she was never quite one of us--as I frequently tell her aunt--a regrettable circumstance. She might have made _you_ a good wife. You are a sensible chap, you see, who would stand no nonsense, I’m sure. But Prince Basil is quite another affair. He belongs to that class of foreign nobles whom we cannot help but admire, insular though we may be, but who should decidedly wed their own women; admirable creatures; trained to suit them and the high position they occupy. Between you and me, my dear fellow, the feminine portion of our Anglo-Saxon race is rapidly becoming too emancipated, too free and easy, too assured of what they are pleased to call their rights--an attitude, let me add, which will gradually lead to the disclassing of the higher orders. It has already begun to do so, and soon the British great lady of old will have totally disappeared. Indeed, we have examples....” “_Mais où sont les neiges d’antan!_” the American quoted to himself, continuing to follow his host’s arguments with a profound and most flattering solemnity of aspect. “Examples,” Sir Robert continued, “which have shown us that blue blood no longer counts for much; that, in short, coronets, time-honored and valiantly won in the glorious past, can be doffed in favor of the red cap of revolution,--sported on the tail of a cart, whence their fair wearers shriek themselves hoarse in the unwashed cause of Socialism.” Mr. Wynne, still listening politely, was beginning to wonder where Sir Robert was heading. “Yes,” he put in, dubiously--“yes, of course you are entirely right, but your niece is scarcely of the kind you refer to, and she will without the possibility of a doubt grace the high estate in which she now finds herself. She very naturally preferred becoming a Serene-Highness to being plain Mrs. Wynne of Nowhere in particular; and who can blame her? She was born to the purple; one can see it at a glance.” Sir Robert rose, walked over to the fire, planted himself on the rug, and, with both hands under his coat-tails, surveyed the speaker.