"Yes?" said Faraday, whose part of the conversation appeared to be deteriorating into monosyllables. "Well, you know, that's not the case at all. With all popper's money, we've never been able to get a real good footing. It seems funny to outsiders, especially as popper and mommer have never been divorced or anything. We've just lived quietly right here in the city always. But," she said, looking tentatively at Faraday to see how he was going to take the statement, "my father's a Northerner. He went back and fought in the war." "You must be very proud of that," said Faraday, feeling that he could now hazard a remark with safety. This simple comment, however, appeared to surprise the enigmatic Miss. Ryan. "Proud of it?" she queried, looking in suspended doubt at Faraday. "Oh, of course I'm proud that he was brave, and didn't run away or get wounded; but if he'd been a Southerner we would have been in society now." She looked pensively at Faraday. "All the fashionable people are Southerners, you know. We would have been, too, if we'd have been Southerners. It's being Northerners that really has been such a drawback." "But your sympathies," urged Faraday, "aren't they with the North?" Miss. Ryan ran the pearl fringe of her tea-gown through her large, handsome hands. "I guess so," she said, indifferently, as if she was considering the subject for the first time; "but you can't expect me to have any very violent sympathies about a war that was dead and buried before I was born." "I don't believe you're a genuine Northerner, or Southerner either," said Faraday, laughing. "I guess not," said the young lady, with the same placid indifference. "An English gentleman whom I knew real well last year said the sympathy of the English was all with the Southerners. He said they were the most refined people in this country. He said they were thought a great deal of in England?" She again looked at Faraday with her air of deprecating query, as if she half expected him to contradict her. "Who was this extraordinarily enlightened being?" asked Faraday. "Mr. Harold Courtney, an elegant Englishman. They said his grandfather was a Lord--Lord Hastings--but you never can be sure about those things. I saw quite a good deal of him, and I sort of liked him, but he was rather quiet. I think if he'd been an American we would have thought him dull. Here they just said it was reserve. We all thought----" A footstep in the hall outside arrested her recital. The door of the room was opened, and a handsome bonneted head appeared in the aperture. "Oh, Gen," said this apparition, hastily--"excuse me; I didn't know you had your company in there?" "Come in, mommer," said Miss. Ryan, politely; "I want to make you acquainted with Mr. Faraday. He's the gentleman I met at Madame Delmonti's the other evening."