thought, had an eye on the ten thousand a year.  So Neil was very gracious, and sugared Blanche’s strawberries for her at breakfast, and read to her after breakfast, and staid at home to lunch, and never mentioned Bessie, or hinted that he would much rather be sitting with her on the old hair-cloth sofa in Mrs. Buncher’s parlor than in that elegantly furnished boudoir, and when the hour for driving came, and his mother complained of a headache, and asked him to go with Blanche, he consented readily, but suggested that she leave her poodle at home, as one puppy was enough for her, he said.

And so about five o’clock the McPherson carriage drove into the park near Apsley House, and in it sat Miss Blanche, gorgeous in light-blue silk and white lace hat, with large solitaires in her ears, her red parasol held airily over her head and her insipid face wreathed in smiles, as she talked to her companion, the handsome Neil, whose dark face was such a contrast to her own, and who reclined indolently at her side, answering her questions mechanically, but thinking always of Bessie, and wondering if she were there in the hired chair, and if she would see him, or, what was more to the purpose, if he should see her among the multitude which thronged the park that afternoon.

Bessie was there, and had been for more than an hour, sitting with her father near one of the entrances from Piccadilly, and wholly unconscious of the attention she was attracting with her beautiful, fresh young face, her animated gestures and eager remarks to her father as she watched the passers-by, and wondered who was who, and wished Neil was there to tell her.

“I’d like to see a real duchess, and not mistake a barmaid for one,” she said; and then a pleasant-looking man, who was standing near, and had heard her remarks, came up to her, and lifting his hat politely said to Archie;

“If you will permit me, sir, I will tell the young lady who the people are.  I know most of them.”

“Oh, thank you; I shall be so glad if you will,” Bessie replied.  “You see, father and I are right from Wales, and it is all quite new to us.”

“Then you were never here before?” the stranger asked, looking down upon her with an undisguised admiration, which yet had nothing impertinent in it.

“Yes, years ago, when I was a mere child, and did not care for things.  Now I want to see everybody—­lords, and earls, and dukes, and deans, and prime ministers, and everybody.  Do you know them?”

“Yes, most of them, by sight,” the stranger said slowly, and taking his stand where he could see her as well as the passers-by, he told her this was a lord, and this was Disraeli, and this a grand lady of fashion, and this a famous beauty, and this a duchess, and that Prince Leopold.

It was a fortunate afternoon Bessie had chosen, for everybody was one in the early June sunshine, and she enjoyed it immensely, and said out what she thought; that titled ladies and grand dames were very ordinary looking people after all, and that the fat old dowager who rode in a coach and four, with powdered footman behind, and a face as red as a beet, was coarse as any fish-woman and that old Dorothy would have looked better on the satin cushions than this representative of English aristocracy.