It had been “ladies” who had fluttered and been anxious about a man in this quite pretty way. He could scarcely remove his eyes from her as he sipped his wine. She felt his escape “providential,” and murmured such devout little phrases concerning it that he was almost consoled for the grotesque inward vision of himself as an aged peer of the realm tumbling out of a baby-carriage and rolled over on the grass at the feet of a man on whom later he had meant to make, in proper state, a formal call. She put her hand to her side, smiling half apologetically. “My heart beats quite fast yet,” she said. Whereupon a quaintly novel thing took place, at the sight of which the duke barely escaped opening his eyes very wide indeed. The American Temple Barholm put his arm about her in the most casual and informally accustomed way, and led her to a chair, and put her in it, so to speak. “Say,” he announced with affectionate authority, “you sit down right away. It's you that needs a glass of wine, and I'm going to give it to you.” The relations between the two were evidently on a basis not common in England even among people who were attached to one another. There was a spontaneous, every-day air of natural, protective petting about it, as though the fellow was fond of her in his crude fashion, and meant to take care of her. He was fond of her, and the duke perceived it with elation, and also understood. He might be the ordinary bestower of boons, but the protective curve of his arm included other things. In the blank dullness of his unaccustomed splendors he had somehow encountered this fine, delicately preserved little relic of other days, and had seized on her and made her his own. “I have not seen anything as delightful as Miss Temple Barholm for many a year,” the duke said when Miss Alicia was called from the room and left them together. “Ain't she great?” was Tembarom's reply. “She's just great.” “It's an exquisite survival of type,” said the duke. “She belongs to my time, not yours,” he added, realizing that “survival of type” might not clearly convey itself. “Well, she belongs to mine now,” answered Tembarom. “I wouldn't lose her for a farm.” “The voice, the phrases, the carriage might survive,-they do in remote neighborhoods, I suppose--but the dress is quite delightfully incredible. It is a work of art,” the duke went on. She had seemed too good to be true. Her clothes, however, had certainly not been dug out of a wardrobe of forty years ago. “When I went to talk to the head woman in the shop in Bond Street I fixed it with 'em hard and fast that she was not to spoil her. They were to keep her like she was. She's like her little cap, you know, and her little mantles and tippets. She's like them,” exclaimed Tembarom.