"I saw you and Senator March going into the Chantreys’," she said, as they walked rapidly along in the deepening dusk. "I admire Miss Chantrey more than any girl in Washington. At first I thought her a little cold, but her very coldness is a sort of sincerity. I should like to have a house exactly like the Chantreys’, except that I would make the atmosphere a little warmer." She rippled out a laugh, and her eyes, under their long lashes, sought Sir Percy’s in the half gloom. "I am afraid that you would find our English houses a little chilly, and they are not always redeemed by such grace as Miss Chantrey’s." "Oh, one expects a little British chilliness in an English house! You admit, you know, that your reserve is nothing but shyness after all. Now I am not in the least shy, and so I have managed to get on beautifully with the few English people I have met. My uncle, you must know, is an Anglomaniac of the deepest dye, and claims relationship with all the peerage and half the baronetage. He is the most prejudiced man! If it were not for me I don’t know what would become of him." Sir Percy was extremely diverted at the notion of a slip of a girl taking care of a member of that great body which had its origin at Runnymede in the far-off days. The stars were coming out in the wintry sky and it was yet some little distance to the streets where the gas lamps flared. It was an enchanting walk to Sir Percy, and without a word being spoken concerning a street car, or a cab, Sir Percy and Lucy Armytage walked together along the quieter streets to the very door of the big hotel. Lucy Armytage went upstairs to her room, the typical hotel bedroom, but which she had transformed into something resembling herself. She had been proud of the bower-like air she had given the large square room, and had regarded with confident admiration the spotless muslin curtains and the thin white draperies over her little bed. Now she looked about her with dissatisfaction. How unlike it was to Eleanor Chantrey’s beautiful and artistic room! And then Eleanor had an exquisite yellow boudoir, in which Lucy once had tea with her. How much beauty and ornament and luxury was in Eleanor’s life! For the first time Lucy Armytage began to wish for something which could not be furnished in Bardstown, Kentucky. "At least," she said, rising and speaking to herself, "I _know_ I’m provincial. It is a great thing to know the limitations of one’s horizon. What a narrow, uncultivated, inartistic, uninteresting person Sir Percy Carlyon must find me after Eleanor Chantrey!" Then she went to her constant and usually faithful consoler--her mirror. But to-night even the mirror seemed not in a flattering mood, and Lucy only saw a disconsolate girl who, to her mind, could stand no comparison with that fine flower of civilisation--Eleanor Chantrey.