"Miss Veal?" said I nonchalantly. "She's jolly, too," he said. But when he sat down on the sofa beside Miss Bumpschus and began to count the lights in the chandelier, I knew of whom he was thinking. A moment there only, and his gaze fell on Pearl, looking up into the face of the gallant Cosmospopolis. She glanced his way and smiled lustrously. Ethel Bumpschus was forgotten, deserted. His Grace shot across the room and secured the prized vacant place before the Prince was aware of the danger. "Jolly evening," cried the Duke; "awfully jolly!" "It is delightful that your Royal Highness cares for our simple American ways," said Mrs. Radigan beaming, as she sat shuffling the cards for a table of bridge. CHAPTER XIX _His Grace Still Hesitates_ I do not believe that Mrs. Radigan will marry again. Time was very recently when she had a fond eye on J. Madison Mudison, for he was undoubtedly the smartest bachelor in town, while she had risen no higher than to stand in the line of patronesses at subscription dances. Now with the new house, the costume-ball, and the completion of a traffic agreement between the Radigan and the Williegilt railroads, she has set herself on such a dizzy height that a match with Mr. Mudison would be a tumble, for Radigan to-day belongs to just as many clubs, and, besides, has millions that keep adding unto themselves. She just sighs when Mudison is mentioned, and perhaps she will blush a little and say there was really never anything in the reports that were abroad. So we regard the affair as history, and Mrs. Radigan never troubles about the past. Her concern is with the future, and to-day the future lies over the sea, among the beer-pots of England, among the leaky palaces of the great Duke of Nocastle, and in the court of his Majesty the King. I grow sad when she reveals her ambition, for to me it means the loss of Pearl Veal; for though at times there comes to me through the cloud of cigarette smoke that hovers around that lovely girl, comes with her smile and her monosyllabic utterances a gleam of hope, it seems really madness to think that when the crucial question is popped by his Grace's solicitor she will refuse. Mrs. Radigan says that her sister is not mad. Mrs. Radigan interprets the inscrutable smile as favorable. Mrs. Radigan goes on laying her plans for a great wedding, and has already hired a press agent. "We can let him have an office in the little reception-room downstairs," she said to me over her teacup the other day. "He can have his type-writers and telephone there, and I am sure that the noise will not disturb us away off here." "But my dear Mrs. Radigan," said I, "you must remember that I am still engaged to your sister, and that Ethel Bumpschus is in the field pitting her ten millions against Pearl's paltry four."