Have I impeded your expedition by taking my friend Mr.Harry to cavalier me to-day ?' Drummond smilingly assured her that she had not in any way disarranged his projects, and passed with so absorbed a brow that the Countess could afford to turn her head and inspect him, without fear that he would surprise her in the act.

Knocking the pearly edge of her fan on her teeth, she eyed him under her joined black lashes, and deliberately read his thoughts in the mere shape of his back and shoulders.

She read him through and through, and was unconscious of the effective attitude she stood in for the space of two full minutes, and even then it required one of our unhappy sex to recall her.

This was Harry Jocelyn.
'My friend,' she said to him, with a melancholy smile, 'my one friend here!' Harry went through the form of kissing her hand, which he had been taught, and practised cunningly as the first step of the ladder.
'I say, you looked so handsome, standing as you did just now,' he remarked; and she could see how far beneath her that effective attitude had precipitated the youth.
'Ah!' she sighed, walking on, with the step of majesty in exile.
'What the deuce is the matter with everybody to-day ?' cried Harry.

'I 'm hanged if I can make it out.