At breakfast, three mornings later, Mr. Laban Skinner and his daughter dallied over their plates, and sent the waiter out again with some asperity when he, taking it for granted they must have finished the meal, came in to clear the table.

Each had been reading a letter, from the early morning mail.

“It is an invitation from the Earl of Drumpipes,” remarked the father, regarding his daughter over his pince-nez, “expressing, in what I am constrained to describe as somewhat abrupt and common-place terms, his desire that we should consider ourselves as his guests during the entire day upon the approaching 24th instant, the occasion being the anniversary of his birth.” He handed over the note for her inspection as he spoke. “The impression which his phraseology produces upon me,” he added, “is that of one performing a perfunctory act of courtesy to foreigners of his acquaintance, to whom he extends the ceremonial proffer of a hospitality which he assumes will be declined.”

“Oh, not at all, papa,” commented Adele, briefly glancing at the note. “All noblemen write in that formal way. It is a part of their bringing-up. No; he wants us to come, right enough. I have a letter here from Mr. Linkhaw, explaining the thing. Of course it was a suggestion of his.”

“I venture the hope,” said Mr. Skinner, “that he improves the opportunity to also explain the otherwise unintelligible fact that during an entire week we have had neither ocular evidence nor any other tangible manifestation of his presence upon this side of the Atlantic. I do not hesitate to avow my surprise at what, after his manifold and, I might say, even importunate professions of eagerness to place his services at our disposal in London, I find myself unable to refrain from regarding as his indifference to our—our being here.”

“No,” said Adele, confidently, “it’s all right. He was kept longer in Scotland than he expected—very urgent family business of some sort—and only arrived in London a couple of days ago, and has been up to his eyes in work since he came. Besides,” she continued with a little smile, “he is very frank; he says he has no clothes fit to go about in London with, but his tailor is working at some new ones for him day and night, and they are promised for the 23d, so that at the birthday party next day——”

“I am far from presuming, Adele,” interrupted the father, gravely, “to ascribe to you a deficiency or obtuseness of perception where considerations of delicacy are involved; but I think I am warranted in pointing out that at home, at least in the social environment to which you have been from your infancy accustomed, a young gentleman would intuitively eschew a subject of this nature in his correspondence with a young lady.”

“Oh, they’re different here,” explained the daughter, with nonchalance. “They talk quite openly over here of lots of things which we never dream of mentioning. You remember that lady in front of us at the theatre last night—when the men in their dress suits came over to talk with her between the acts—how she told them right out, that although it was so hot she had to fan herself all the while, still her legs felt quite shivery. Now, a speech like that would stand Louisville on its head, let alone Paris, Kentucky, but here it passes without the slightest notice. It’s the custom of the country. I rather like it myself.”

Mr. Skinner sighed, and pecked timorously at his egg with a spoon. “I am not wanting, I trust, in tolerance for the natural divergences of habit and manner which distinguish the widely-separated branches of the Anglo-Saxon race, or in a desire to accommodate myself to their peculiarities when I confront them in the course of foreign travel; but I with difficulty bring myself to contemplate with satisfaction the method of partaking of a soft-boiled egg which obtains favour in these islands. To my mind, the negation of the principle of a centre of gravity involved in the construction of this egg cup, combined with the objectionably inadequate dimensions of the spoon——”

“Dig it out on to your plate, then; the waiter won’t come in again till I ring,” suggested the daughter.

“I prefer the alternative of abstention,” he answered. “The spectacle of stains upon the cloth or upon the plate would be equally suggestive to the servant’s scrutiny.”

He rose as he spoke. Adele, gathering up the letters, did likewise, and rang the bell.

Mr. Skinner, having glanced out at the river panorama from the balcony window for a little, and then looked over the market columns of a newspaper, turned again to his daughter.

“I gather that we are to accept the invitation of the Earl of Drumpipes,” he remarked, tentatively.

Adele nodded. “Why, of course,” she said; “that’s to be the formal beginning of everything. It is intended to make our position here perfectly regular. Lord Drumpipes is the head of Mr. Linkhaw’s family. It is entirely becoming that he should take the initiative in recognising us.”

“Ah yes, in recognising us,” he repeated. “I suppose, Adele, it would be futile for me to recur to the question whether you have sufficiently weighed the opposing considerations with regard to Mr. Linkhaw, and the——”

“Mercy, yes!” interposed Adele, with promptitude. “Don’t let’s have that all over again. I’ve quite settled everything in my own mind.”

“Since I was afforded the opportunity of personally observing and conversing with the Earl of Drumpipes,” pursued the father, “and of thus forming authoritative conclusions as to the British nobility in general, I have devoted much thought to the subject. While I do not suggest that my well-known views upon the aristocratic institution, as a whole, have undergone any perceptible transformation, I do not shrink from the admission that the thought of being connected by marriage with the bearer of an hereditary title no longer presents itself to me in such repulsive colours as was formerly the case. If, therefore, with your undoubted advantages, it should occur to you to entertain the idea of a possible alliance with the nobility, I would not have you feel that my convictions formed a necessarily insuperable barrier to——“,

“No, no!” the daughter broke in, with a laugh. “I’ll promise to disregard your convictions as much as you like. But now I want you to go out, and kill time by yourself somewhere till luncheon. I want to be left alone. There is some place where elderly American gentlemen can go, isn’t there, without getting into mischief? Oh yes, you must go, and not just downstairs to hang about the hotel entrance, but straight away somewhere. Why? My dear papa, I have my secrets as well as you.”

“But that secret of mine,” he protested feebly, “I assure you, Adele, that it is really nothing at all. That is, it does involve matters both interesting and important; but the fact that I am precluded from mentioning them is in the nature of a pure accident, and wholly without significance.”

“Good-bye till luncheon time,” answered Adele, with affable firmness. “And mind you quit the premises.”

Mr. Skinner found his hat, smiled dubiously at his daughter, and without further parley took himself off.

Adele, left alone, looked at the watch in her girdle, and compared its record with that of the ornate clock on the mantel. She took up the paper and ran an aimless eye over one page after another. Then she walked about with a restless movement, pausing from time to time to bend a frowning yet indifferent inspection upon the scene spread out beyond the balcony.

At last there came a tap on the door, and at sound of this, even as she called out a clear, commanding “Come!” she withdrew all signs of perturbation, or of emotion of any sort, from her beautiful dark countenance.

It was Vestalia who entered the room—Vestalia, clad in daintily unpretentious and becoming garments, neatly gloved, and with much radiant self-possession upon her pretty face. She paused upon the threshold, nodded rather than bowed to her hostess, and let a little smile sparkle in her eyes and play about her rosebud of a mouth.

“Your father does not succeed very well in keeping his secrets, I observe,” she remarked, pleasantly, by way of an overture to conversation.

“Won’t you please to be seated,” said Adele, with exaggerated calmness. She herself took a chair, and slowly surveyed her visitor as she went on: “My father has no secrets from me. He tries to have—once in a blue moon—but it doesn’t come off. I may tell you frankly, however, that he has in this case told me nothing. I found your address, and other information, in looking through his pockets. I am under no obligation to tell you this: I simply feel like it, that’s all. I hate dissimulation.”

“And I suppose you have your things made up without pockets,” suggested Vestalia, amiably.

Adele put some added resolution into her glance. “I wrote asking you to call,” she said coldly, “because it became a nuisance not to know what you were up to.”

“Ah,” replied Vestalia, “it looks as if your father must have destroyed some of our correspondence. How thoughtless of him!”

Miss Skinner paused, and knitted her queenly brows a trifle. She did not seem to be getting on. “I have no wish to waste time in trying to be funny,” she avowed, after some hesitation. “Now that you are here, have you any objection to telling me why you swore my father to keep a secret from me?”

“Oh, just a whim of mine, nothing more,” Vestalia assured her, lightly. “I frequently have notions like that, that I can’t in the least account for.”

“No, you had a reason,” insisted the other, with gravity. “And you must tell me what it was. I have been frank with you.”

“And I will not be behind you in candour,” said Vestalia, as if won by an appeal to her better self. “It was because you looked at me in the Museum as if you thought my hair was dyed.”

“Well, so it is, isn’t it?” demanded Adele, bluntly.

“Upon my honour, no!” the other replied. “And now you look at me as if you thought that that wasn’t much to swear by. It’s possible that you do not realise it, but your eyes leave something to be desired in the matter of politeness.”

“I’m afraid that’s true,” Adele assented. “I have an effect of looking very hard at things, simply because I’m near-sighted. I ought to wear glasses, but they do not suit me.”

“Yes,” said Vestalia, with a meditative look, “it would be a pity for you to put them on. They would detract from your face. It is very beautiful as it is—for a dark style.”

“Sometimes I feel that I am almost tired of being dark,” confessed Adele. “Your hair is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. I could see that your gentleman-friend at the Museum admired it immensely.”

“Oh yes, he said so repeatedly,” Vestalia replied, with a demure display of pleasure at the recollection.

Again there was a little pause. Then Miss Skinner essayed another opening. “Your name—Peaussier—would indicate French extraction,” she remarked. “And French people are so very dark, as a rule, aren’t they? My mother was a Creole—from Louisiana, you know—and I suppose that accounts for my colour.”

“Well, my mother was Scotch,” explained Vestalia, “and they are sandy.”

“The Scotch gentleman that you were with at the Museum—he was decidedly a dark man,” suggested Adele, with a casual manner.

“Now that I think of it, so he was,” said Vestalia.

The measured and ceremonious ticking of the expensive clock on the mantel had the silence to itself for a space, while the two ladies looked at each other.

“So you won’t tell me anything?” Miss Skinner exclaimed at last.

“The trouble is, don’t you see, that I am quite in the dark as to what you want to know. If you will tell me just what was in your father’s pockets, I c............