I know one thing of which the reader has not as yet got an inkling, The Williamses were rich. They were rich, passing knowledge, passing belief. Sums of which you and I dream in moments of supreme excitement would not have paid one of Mrs. Williams's cable bills; would not have supported Granny Williams's hot-houses and Angora cat farm through a late spring frost. James Williams and his father before him were as magnets where money was concerned. And it is a fact of family history that once James, returning from a walk in the mud, found a dime sticking to the heel of his right boot. Fitzhugh was the heir of all this, and that was why it was necessary for him to be superior in other ways as well. But Europeanize him as she would, he remained the son of his fathers. French history was drummed in through his ears by learned tutors, and could be made for the next few days to come out of his mouth. But he absorbed American history through the back of his head, even when there was none about to be absorbed, and that came out often, I am afraid, when people didn't especially want it to. Neither could any amount of aristocratic training and association turn the blood in his veins blue. If one had taken the trouble to look at a specimen of it under a microscope I believe one would have discovered a resemblance between the corpuscles thereof and the eagles that are the tails of coins; and the color of it was red--bright red. And this was proven, that time when little Lord Percy Pumps ran at Fitz, head down like a Barbadoes nigger, and butted him in the nose. The Honorable Fifi Grey, about whom the quarrel arose, was witness to the color of that which flowed from the aforementioned nose; and witness also to the fact that during the ensuing cataclysm no blood whatever, neither blue nor red, came from Lord Percy Pumps--nothing but howls. But, alas! we may not now call upon the Honorable Fifi Grey for testimony. She is no longer the Honorable Fifi. Quite the reverse. I had her pointed out to me last summer (she is Lady Khorset now), and my informant wriggled with pleasure and said, "Now, there _is_ somebody." "You mean that slim hedge-fence in lavender?" I asked. "By jove, yes!" said he. "That's Lady Khorset, the wickedest woman in London, with the possible exception of Lady Virginia Pure--the Bicyclyste, you know." I did know. Had I not that very morning seen in a Piccadilly window a photograph of almost all of her?