The tradition in Cissie Boscobel became evident on a day in July when she came to sit beside me in the grounds of the Casino. I had gone with Mrs. Rossiter, with whom I had been watching the tennis. When she drifted away with a group of her friends I was left alone. It was then that Lady Cecilia, in tennis things, with her racket in her hand, came across the grass to me. She moved with the splendid careless freedom of women who pass their lives outdoors and yet are trained to drawing-rooms. She didn't go to her point at once; she was, in fact, a mistress of the introductory. The visits she had made and the people she had met since our last meeting were the theme of her remarks; and now she was staying with the Burkes. She would remain with them for a month, after which she had two or three places to go to on Long Island and in the Catskills. She would have to be at Strath-na-Cloid in September, for the wedding of her sister Janet and the young man in the Inverness Rangers, who would then have got home from India. She would be sorry to leave. She adored America. Americans were such fun. Their houses were so fresh and new. She doted on the multiplicity of bathrooms. It would be so horrid to live at Strath-na-Cloid or Dillingham Hall after the cheeriness of Mrs. Burke's or Mrs. Rossiter's. Screwing up her greenish cat-like eyes till they were no more than tiny slits with a laugh in them, she said, with her deliciously incisive utterance: "So you've done it, haven't you?" "You mean that Mr. Brokenshire has come round." "You know, that seems to me the most wonderful thing I ever heard of! It's like a miracle isn't it? You've hardly lifted a finger--and yet here it is." She leaned forward, her firm hands grasping the racket that lay across her knees. "I want to tell you how much I admire you. You're splendid! You're not a bit like a Colonial, are you?" Since she meant well, I mastered my indignation. "Oh yes, I am. I'm exactly like a Colonial, and very proud of the fact." "Fancy! And are all Colonials like you?" "All that aren't a great deal cleverer and better." "Fancy!" she breathed again. "I must tell them when I go home. They don't know it, you know." She added, in a slight change of key: "I'm so glad Hugh is going to have a wife like you." It was on my tongue to say, "He'd be much better off with a wife like you"; but I made it: "What do you think it will do for him?" "It will bring him out. Hugh is splendid in his way--just as you are--only he needs bringing out, don't you think?" "He hasn't needed bringing out in the last ten months," I declared, with some emphasis. "See what he's done--" "And yet he didn't pull it off, did he? You managed that. You'll manage a lot of other things for him, too. I must go back to the others," she continued, getting up. "They're waiting for me to make up the set. But I wanted to tell you I'm--I'm glad--without--without any--any reserves."