"What a lovely little clock in miniature!" exclaimed Rose looking over Mary's shoulder. "It is a real clock," said Adeline, "it plays the chimes at the hours, and those are real diamonds. My grandmamma always said she should give me something worth keeping on my eighteenth birthday, and she sent me this. I am so sorry she was not well enough to come to us for tonight! Stay, I will touch the spring." As Adeline raised her right hand hastily, anxious that Rose and Mary Carr should hear the melodious chimes of this ingenious ornament, the chains of her emerald bracelet caught in the button of a gentleman's coat, who made one of the group pressing round her. With a slight jerk she disentangled the chain, but it brought away with it a flower he had held in his hand. _It was a French marigold!_ The brilliant hue deepened upon Adeline's cheek as she looked at the flower. She turned and held it out to the owner. He was a stranger, a young and most distinguished-looking man, possessing in no common degree that air of true nobility which can neither be concealed nor assumed. His countenance was one of rare beauty, and his eyes were bent with a pleasant earnest expression of admiration upon Adeline. _You_ have met him before, reader, but Adeline had not. She addressed an apology to him, as she restored the flower, speaking intuitively in English: it required not an introduction to know that that tall, high-bred man was no Frenchman. He was answering a few words of gallantry, as he received it--that the fair hand it had been in invested the flower with an extrinsic interest--when M. de Castella came into the circle, an aged man by his side. "Adeline," he said to his daughter, "have you forgotten your old friend, the Baron de la Chasse?" With an exclamation of pleasure, Adeline held out her hand. She had been so much with the English, that she had fully acquired their habit of hand-shaking. The old baron did not seem to understand her, but he took her hand and placed it within his arm. They moved away, and there was a general breaking up of the group. "Lottie Singleton," began Rose, "do you know who that handsome man is?" "Handsome!" returned Miss Singleton. "Everybody's handsome with you. I call him old and ugly." "I don't mean the French baron. That distinguished-looking Englishman with the marigold." "He! I know nothing of him. He came in with the Maxwells. I saw Sir Sandy introduce him to Madame de Castella." "Where could he have found that French marigold at this season of the year?" wondered Rose. "Oh, Miss Maxwell has all sorts of odd flowers in that box of hers, four feet square, which she calls her conservatory," returned the archdeacon's daughter. "He must have found it there." "Lord John," cried Rose, summarily arresting Lord John Seymour, who was passing, and whom she had never seen but once in her life, and that months before, "who is that handsome man I saw you talking with just now?"