“A California gentleman!” with a scornful accent upon the last word.  “You speak of him as of an equal.”

“Certainly,” returned the baronet, a smile of amusement slightly curling his lips, “Mr. Abbot was my equal, if not my superior, in point of intellect, and all that goes to make a gentleman, while his daughter is in no wise my inferior.”

“How can you make such an absurd statement, William?” demanded his sister, impatiently.  “The idea of an American plebeian being the equal of a Heath of Heathdale!”

Sir William laughed outright; then he said: 

“Your loyalty to your family does you credit, Miriam, but I imagine, if you should ever visit America—­which I trust for your own sake, you will do some time—­that you will return much wiser than you went.  Your ideas regarding people and things, in that grand republic are very crude and incorrect.  But how do you like the face that I have shown you?”

“The face is well enough,” Lady Linton was forced to admit.

There is nothing weak about it?”

“N-o.”

“It is not lacking in intelligence or character?”

“Not so far as I am able to judge from a simple picture”, the woman confessed, rather reluctantly.

“And yet it does not flatter her; you do not often see a face like that even among the noble families of England, and she is as lovely in mind as in person,” said Sir William, fondly, as he took up one of the photographs and gazed upon it with his heart in his eyes.

“Humph! if you are so proud of your American bride, why did you not bring her home with you?” Lady Linton inquired, in a mocking tone, and then could have bitten her tongue through for having allowed herself to betray her curiosity so far.

Sir William flushed hotly.  It was evident that his sister was no more reconciled since seeing Virgie’s pictures than before.  Her pride of birth had received a shock which she could neither overlook nor forgive.

“Lady Heath was not able to travel.  Her physician told me that if she crossed the ocean it would be at the risk of her life.  Miriam, Virgie will soon become a mother, God willing.”

Lady Linton started and shot a swift look of astonishment at her brother upon this unexpected announcement.

This information was disagreeable in the extreme, for it made certain plans, which her fertile brain had begun to weave as soon as she had learned that her brother had returned without his wife, all the more complicated, if not well-nigh impossible.

“It was a great trial for me to return without her,” Sir William went on, with a regretful sigh, “but your summons was so very imperative that I felt obliged to do so.  My darling bore it very bravely, however; she regarded it as my duty to hasten to my mother, even though she would be left alone, a stranger in a great city, and at such a critical time.”

“Of course it was your duty to return to our mother,” Lady Linton responded emphatically, as if the young wife away upon the other side of the Atlantic was not worthy of consideration.  “And,” she added, flashing a look of defiance at her companion, “I am free to confess to a feeling of relief that you had to come alone—­”