mrs. winstone, an excessively pretty woman, with blue eyes and fair hair, and a fresh complexion responsive to the arts of rejuvenation, seated herself before the tea-table and arranged her expression, determined not to betray her feelings when julia entered in a white muslin frock made by the seamstress of nevis. but as julia, with all the confidence of an only child (such had practically been her position), entered smiling, her hair pinned softly about her head, mrs. winstone’s own spontaneous smile, which did so much for her popularity, without seaming the satin of her skin, responded. she saw at once what had dawned upon even mrs. edis’s provincial and scientific mind, that the girl at least knew how to put on her clothes, that she could wear white muslin and a blue sash and neck ribbon with an air.

“we shall have jolly times with the shops and dressmakers,” she said warmly. “we’ll begin to-morrow morning. you are to be presented at the last drawing-room and must go into training at once. the duke wishes it. really, i didn’t think there’d be anything so excitin’ this season as puttin’ the wife of harold france through her paces. how do, algy?”

she extended a finger to a young man who lounged in with a bored expression, and a dragging of one foot after the other that suggested excesses which were preparing him for an early grave; in truth, he was a virtuous and timid younger son, who, being able to afford but one vice, chose cigarettes, and in the privacy of his room—he lived at home—smoked the economical american.

mrs. winstone, with the vagueness of her kind, murmured, “my niece,” and poured him out a cup of tea, while embarking smartly upon a tide of gossip anent “sonnys” and “berties,” “mollys” and “vickys,” to which julia had no key. but she was quite content to be ignored, being entirely happy, and deeply interested in her aunt and her new surroundings. with a quick and appreciative instinct she admired the rectangular room with its soft light and french furniture, its hundred little treasures from india and the continent. the tea-service was fairylike, compared with the massive pieces of great house, and eminently in harmony with the pretty butterfly and her slender fluttering hands. mrs. winstone, as has been intimated, cultivated an expression of complete ingenuousness, even in animated conversation, and in repose—as when driving alone, for instance—looked so drained of vulgar sensations, of that capacity for thought so necessary to the middle classes, poor dears, that even an englishman was once heard to exclaim that he would like to throw a wet sponge at her. her figure might have been taller, but it could hardly have been thinner, and carried smart gowns as an angel carries her natural feathers. women liked her, not only for the reasons given, but because her acute intelligence chose that they should, and men liked, sometimes loved, her because she knew them as well as she did women, and managed them accordingly.

her present adorer, lord algernon fitzmiff, was tall, loose-jointed, with sleek brown hair, a mathematical profile, and beautiful clothes. he would never pay his tailor; never, unless he caught an heiress, own a thousand pounds. but at least a chinaman on his first visit to england would never have taken him for a member of the middle class; and when a man is no disgrace to “his order,” who shall maintain that his life is wasted?

julia, finding him even less interesting than her husband, was on the other side of the room admiring an old bronze brought to england in the palmy days of the east india company, when three visitors were announced:?—

“mrs. macmanus, mr. pirie, mr. nigel herbert.”

“dear julia!” cried mrs. winstone, in a tone which, although subdued, made an effect of floating across space until the drawing-room seemed immense, “come and meet my friends.”

julia, born without mauvaise honte, passed the ordeal of introduction in a fashion which delighted her aunt, and sat down under the lorgnette of mrs. macmanus.

this intimate friend of mrs. winstone was also in her thirty-fifth year, but enormously rich, as lazy of body as she was quick of mind, and, inclined to gout, quite indifferent to both youth and clothes. her black frock would not have been worn by her maid, her stays were of the old school, her hair was parted, and about her eyes were many amiable lines. there were those who maintained that she was a snob of the subtlest dye, daring to look like a frump because of her income and her ramifications in the peerage; but they were quite wrong. mrs. macmanus was so little of a snob that she rarely recognized snobbery in others, hated every variety of discomfort, and could not have been more amiable and kind-hearted had she been poor and a nobody.

mr. pirie, although only forty-five, was already an old beau. left with an income sufficient for a luxurious bachelor, too selfish to ask the present mrs. macmanus to share it when she was a penniless girl, and with none of the recommendations essential to the capture of predatory heiresses, he had lived for twenty-five years in very comfortable rooms in jermyn street, dining out every night during the season, taking his yearly waters at carlsbad, visiting at country houses. in no way distinguished, people wondered sometimes why they continued, year after year, to invite him; but he had been astute enough to hang on until he had become a fixed habit, and now, should any of the ailments which come from too much dining with owners of chefs take him off, he would have been sincerely missed for a season; he was a good-natured gossip, who could put vitriol on his tongue at the unique moment. mrs. macmanus had been free for fifteen years, and he had proposed to her fifteen times; but not only was that astute widow content with her present state, but she never quite forgave him for not proposing before he was obliged to wear a toupee. she liked him, however, and gave him a corner at her fireside. for several years she had tried to make him work, being of that order of woman that has no patience with the idler. in her youth, she had been quite impassioned on the subject, but had learned that to backbone the invertebrate was as easy as to turn marble into flesh. when, a few years later, the americans discovered the hookworm, she concluded that half england had it, and became entirely charitable.

young herbert, who immediately carried his tea over to julia’s side, was but recently out of oxford, reading law to please his father (an eminently practical peer), but quietly preparing himself for literature. he had a fresh frank face, which refused to look politely bored, large blue eyes, that danced at times with youth and the zest of life, and although dressed with the perfection of detail of a lord algy fitzmiff, his movements, like his voice, were often quick and eager. he had been cultivating mrs. winstone with a view to succeeding lord algy, since she was so much the fashion, and rippin’ besides, but she vanished from his calculations the moment he set eyes on her niece, and never returned.

he had heard nothing of the marriage, mrs. winstone with fashionable casualness having omitted to mention it, and society being as indifferent to the performances of a man who spent his leaves of absence in paris, as to the heir presumptive of an unfashionable duke.

“miss france—surely—” he began. but julia bridled. she was proud of her married state. she sat up very straight and looked at him primly.

he laughed aloud. “really?” he asked teasingly. “well, i suppose you are too young to like to be told you look so, but—i can’t take it in. do i know your husband, perhaps? france—there are several. you are a bride, of course.”

“i have been married just twenty-four days. my husband is a lieutenant in the navy. he won’t be here for a month or two yet?—”

“in the navy—what—what—is his first name?”

“harold. he has a lot of others, but i forget them.”

“not the duke of kingsborough’s?—”

“yes, and aunt maria says perhaps i shall stay at some of the castles this year.”

herbert’s hand shook so that he was obliged to put down his cup. he was almost a generation younger than france, and rarely entered his own club, but there are some characters that are known to all men of their class, however unpopular or negligible socially they may be. herbert felt a sensation of nausea, and for the moment loathed this wonderful young creature that looked to be composed of light and fire. what must she really be made of to have fallen in love with a man like france? what sort of hideous inherited instincts had answered those of a man that did not even possess the common gift of magnetism? what had he made of her?

he had been bred in the severe school of his class. his composure returned and he looked at her critically. red hair. a sensual and ill-tempered little devil, no doubt. then he encountered her eyes, eyes so unmistakably innocent, so different from the eyes of the mrs. winstones, with their manufactured ingenuousness, their injected wonder at the naughtiness of the world.

but he floundered. “oh, of course. castles. and of course, mr. france is very handsome—distinguished.”

julia was staring at him in open astonishment. “handsome? he looks like a sheep, when he doesn’t look like a calf—that’s the way he looked when he stared at me while mother was talking to him. i had never talked to a man in my life. he must have thought me quite stupid. i am sure he was very kind to marry me.”

“kind?”

“mother said he was in love, but somehow—well, i have only read a few of scott’s novels—he doesn’t seem much like a lover to me. but after i’ve seen the world a bit, and read some modern novels, perhaps i shall understand mr. france better. i should think it would be a good thing to understand one’s husband.”

“rather.” he was devoured with curiosity, and changed the subject hastily. “what is your idea of a man that could make love, fall in love?” he asked, not yet quite sure whether he liked her well enough even for a mild flirtation.

but julia had liked him spontaneously. his youth, his breeding, his frank kind eyes, the mere fact that he was the first man near her own age with whom she had ever had a tête-à-tête, won her confidence, and fluttered her imagination. she regarded him dispassionately.

“you, i should think. but i don’t know very much—anything about it.”

was this accomplished coquetry? but those eyes. “will you tell me where you have come from?” he asked. “i—i can’t quite place you.”

“from nevis, where aunt maria was born.”

“and there are no men there?”

“no young ones. i met mr. france at my first party, anyhow. i had no friends—not even girls. my mother is peculiar—a very wonderful woman. some day i’ll tell you about her. but she made up her mind i was to have no friends until i married.”

herbert made another heroic attempt to repress his curiosity. “and why do you think i could fall in love—really in love?”

“well—you see—you look elastic, springy, waxy, sappy, like the young trees. mr. france is all made, hard, finished. he’s like an old tree with rough bark, and dry inside. i suppose he could love when he was your age, but he’s years too old now. i shall always think of him as a father—my father had a son eighteen years old when he was mr. france’s age—and i was eighteen my last birthday.”

herbert drew a long breath. he put his finger inside his collar and shot a glance at the rest of the party. they were discussing the resignation of gladstone and his indictment of the peers; english people, no matter how frivolous, are never as empty-headed as americans of the same class. moreover, mrs. winstone included several flirtations in the curriculum, and looked upon herbert as quite safe.

the question popped out irresistibly. “then your mother arranged the match?”

“of course.”

“and—and—you aren’t in love with your husband now that you’re married to him? girls often are, you know.”

“what difference does that make?”

“well—i should think france would know how to make love even if he couldn’t love—i fancy you’ve hit him off there.”

“well, he may, but i hope he won’t. forty! he used to talk a good deal about wanting to settle down. so, i suppose he’ll do that, and i am sure i could run a house as well as mother.”

“run a house! is that the way he made love to you?”

“he never made love to me. mother always entertained him, and he had to sail as soon as the ceremony was over, instead of taking me up into the hills, as he had planned.”

herbert felt a wild sense of exultation and an equally wild impulse to save her. the finest type of young englishman inherits a deep and passionate tide of chivalry, and his was whipped hard and high for the first time. a crime had been committed, a worse one menaced; this he would avert if he had to elope with the child and ruin his career. there was no room left in him for humor; it was the best plan he could think of, just as mrs. winstone’s plan to make her innocent little niece so frivolous, worldly, and sophisticated that in a measure she would be prepared for life with one of the most blatant roués in england, was the best her order of brain could evolve. and julia, plastic, unawakened, inexperienced, gave the impression of being entirely agreeable to any plans that might be made for her.

herbert, young and chivalrous as he might be, and still able to fall in love at first sight, was the product of the highest civilization on earth, and in no danger of making a precipitate ass of himself. he also was as subtle as a frank and honest nature can be, and he realized that he must proceed warily. an innocent girl can be repelled even by a young and attractive lover, and mrs. winstone, although she would smile at a flirtation, would be the last to countenance a scandal in her family. moreover, it was possible that he might be mistaken in the sensations inspired by this girl with the big shining happy eyes, hair that looked as if about to crackle, and a sort of electric aura. he had been in love before, and recovered with humiliating facility. his reason spoke, but all the rest of him cried out that he was in love, desperately in love, that it was the real thing, at last. and she needed him. that clinched the matter.

he changed the subject abruptly, and, as much as possible, the current of his thoughts. “of course mrs. winstone is enchanting, ripping,” he announced warmly. “quite the youngest woman in london” (this, without insulting intent). “but after all, you are just grown, and must have friends of your own age. my sister, alas! is in india, but one of her pals married my brother—and her great friend, lady ishbel jones—we are all great pals. i’m sure you’ll like them both?—”

“when shall i meet them? are they my age?”

“only a little older—twenty-three. ishbel was married when she was nineteen—her husband is rather a bounder, but unspeakably rich, and she was one of fourteen daughters of a poor irish peer. bridgit, my sister-in-law, married for love—my brother is one of the best looking men in the army. she married at eighteen—and has a little chap, but she’s one of the best cross-country riders in england, and a topper at golf and tennis; fine all-round sport, and loves society as much as ishbel. she’s sweeter, more feminine on the outside, but no more of a brick, and all-there-all-the-time than bridgit. i’m sure they’re just the friends for you.”

“i’m rather afraid of them; they’re really grown women, and i know quite well that i’m only a child. i realized it a bit the night of my first party at government house, when i saw the other girls flirting; and on the steamer they teased me a good deal. but i must have some friends of my age. i am beginning to long for them. it is so odd—i was quite happy alone—so long as i knew nothing else. and i didn’t care to marry for years, but—” she gave a side glance at the intent face as close to hers as the etiquette of the drawing-room permitted, hesitated an instant, for she was growing sensitive about her ignorance. but the friendly admiring eyes reassured her, and out came the story of the planets. it was the last straw. herbert left the house in tilney street feeling the one romantic man in england, and almost shaking with excitement.