than myself, who married twelve years ago. Her husband is an artist in San Francisco, rather a genius, so they are always poor. My mother died when I was little. After my sister married I took care of my father until I was twenty-one, when he died—four years ago. There are very good schools in Rosewater, particularly the High School. My father also taught me languages. He had a very fine library. But I do not believe this interests you. Doubtless you want to know something of the life with which Lady Victoria is so remotely connected."

"I am far more interested in you. Tell me whichever you like first. How are you related, by-the-way?"

"Father used to draw our family tree whenever he had bronchitis in winter. One of the most famous of the Spanish Californians was Don José Argüello. We are descended from one of his sons, who had a ranch of a hundred thousand acres in the south. When the Americans came, long after, they robbed the Californians shamefully, but fortunately the son of the Argüello that owned the ranch at the time married an American girl whose father bought up the mortgages. He left the property to his only grandchild, a girl, who married my great-grandfather, James Otis—a northern rancher, born in Boston, and descended from old Sam Adams. He had two children, a boy and a girl, who inherited the northern and southern ranches in equal shares. The girl came over to England to visit an aunt who lived here, was presented at court, and straightway married a lord."

"Then you are second cousin to Vicky and third to Jack. I had no idea the relationship was so close."

"It has seemed very remote to me ever since I laid eyes on Lady Victoria down-stairs. Father made me promise, just before he died, that if ever I visited Europe I would look her up. Somehow I hadn't thought of her except as Elton Gwynne's mother, so I wrote to her without a qualm. But I see that she is an individual."

"Rather! How self-contained our great London is, after all! Vicky has been a beauty for over thirty years—to be sure her fame was at its height before you were old enough to be interested in such things. But I should have thought your father—"

"He must have known all about her. It comes back to me that he was very proud of the connection for more than family reasons, but it made no impression on me at the time."

"Proud?"

"Yes, he was rather a snob. He was very clever, but he fell out of things, and being able to dwell on his English and Spanish connections meant a good deal to him. I can recite the family history backwards."

"But if he was clever, why on earth did he live in Rosewater? Surely he could have practised in San Francisco?"

"He drank. When a man drinks he doesn't care much where he lives. My father had fads but no ambition."

"Great heaven!" exclaimed Miss Thangue, aghast at this toneless frankness. "You must have been glad to be rid of him!"

"I was fond of him, but his death was a great relief. He was a hard steady secret drinker. I nursed him through several attacks of delirium tremens, and was always in fear that he would get out and disgrace us. Sometimes he did, although when I saw the worst coming I generally managed to get him over to the ranch. Of course it tied me down. I rarely even visited my sister. My father hated San Francisco. He had practised there in his youth, promised great things, had plenty of money. The time came—" She shrugged her shoulders, although without the slightest change of expression. "I never lived my own life until he died, but I have lived it ever since."

"And the first thing you did with your liberty was to come to Europe," said Miss Thangue, with a sympathetic smile.

"Of course. My father and uncle had got rid of most of their property long before they died; there isn't an acre left of our share in the southern estate. But my uncle died six years ago and willed me all that remained of the northern, as well as some land in the poorer quarter of San Francisco. I could not touch the principal during the lifetime of my father, but we lived on the ranch and I managed it and was entitled, by the terms of the will, to what I could make it yield. When I was finally mistress of my fortunes I left it in charge of an old servant, sold enough to pay off the mortgage on a property in San Francisco I inherited from my mother, and came to Europe with a personally conducted tour."

Miss Thangue shuddered. The phrase unrolled a vista of commonness and attrition. Miss Otis continued, calmly: "That is the way I should feel now. But it was my only chance then; or rather I had seen enough of business to avoid making mistakes when I could. In that way I learned the ropes. After we had been rushed about for six weeks and I could not have told you whether the Pitti Palace was in Italy or France, and the celebrated frescos were one vast pink smudge, the party returned and I wandered on by myself. I spent a winter in Paris, and months in Brittany, Austria, Italy, Spain—Munich." It was here that her even tones left their register for a second. "I studied the languages, the literatures, the peoples, music, pictures. In Munich"—this time Flora's alert ear detected no vibration—"and also in Rome, I saw something of society. It was a life full of freedom, and I shall never cease to be grateful for it, but I must go home soon and look after my affairs. I left England to the last, like the best things of the banquet. I hope Lady Victoria—I shall never be able to call her Cousin Victoria, as I remember father did—will be nice to me. I have seen a good deal of life, but have never had a real girl's time, and I should love it. Besides, I have a lot of new frocks."

"I am sure Vicky will be nice to you. If she isn't, I'll find some one that will be. You might marry Jack if you had money enough. We are dying to get him married—and a California cousin—it would be too romantic. And you would hold your own anywhere!"

But Miss Otis expanded a fine nostril. "I have no desire to marry. I feel as if I had had enough of men to last until I am forty—what with those I have buried, and others I have known at home and in Europe—to say nothing of the executors of my uncle's will, who did not approve of my coming abroad alone and delayed the settlement of the estate as long as possible. And now I have had too much liberty! Besides, I have seen 'Jack's' picture—two years ago, in a magazine. I will confess I had some romantic notions about him: imagined him very dashing, bold, handsome; insolent, if you like—the traditional young aristocrat, glorified by genius. He looks like Uncle Hiram."

"Is that who Jack looks like? We never could make out. No, Jack is not much to look at, except when he wakes up—I have seen him quite transfigured on the platform. But he is as insolent as you could wish, and has a superb confidence in himself that his enemies call by the most offensive names. But he is a dear, in spite of all, and I quite adore him."

"Perhaps; but life, myself, so many mysteries and problems, upon which I have barely turned a dark lantern as yet, interest me far more than any man could, unless he were superlative. I have had my disillusions."

She lit another cigarette, and for a few moments looked silently out of the window at the darkening woods beyond the lawn. Flora Thangue regarded her with a swelling interest. It was a type of which she had no knowledge, evidently not a common type even in the hypothetical land of the free; she had visited New York and Newport and known many Americans. True, she had never met the provincial type before, but she doubted if Rosewater had produced a crop of Isabel Otises. What was at the source of that cold-blooded frankness, so different from the English fashion of alternately speaking out and knowing nothing? Was she merely an egoist—it ran in the family—or did it conceal much that she had no intention of revealing? Her very beauty was of a type rarely seen in the America of to-day, prevalent as it may have been a hundred years ago: