They were incessantly together, riding, or driving, or walking, looking at pictures, dancing at parties, listening to opera or play.

“It seems to me Will is going it at a pretty tremendous pace somewhere,” said Mr. Surrey to his wife, one morning, after this had endured for a space.  “It would be well to look into it, and to know something of this girl.”

“You are right,” she replied.  “Yet I have such absolute faith in Willie’s fine taste and sense that I feel no anxiety.”

“Nor I; yet I shall investigate a bit to-night at Augusta’s.”

“Clara tells me that when Miss Ercildoune understood it was to be a great party, she insisted on ending her visit, or, at least, staying for a while with her aunt, but they would not hear of it.”

“Mrs. Lancaster goes back to England soon?”

“Very soon.”

“Does any one know aught of Miss Ercildoune’s family save that Mrs. Lancaster is her aunt?”

“If ‘any one’ means me, I understand her father to be a gentleman of elegant leisure,—­his home near Philadelphia; a widower, with one other child,—­a son, I believe; that his wife was English, married abroad; that Mrs. Lancaster comes here with the best of letters, and, for herself, is most evidently a lady.”

“Good.  Now I shall take a survey of the young lady herself.”

When night came, and with it a crowd to Mrs. Russell’s rooms, the opportunity offered for the survey, and it was made scrutinizingly.  Surrey was an only son, a well-beloved one, and what concerned him was investigated with utmost care.

Scrutinizingly and satisfactorily.  They were dancing, his sunny head bent till it almost touched the silky blackness of her hair.  “Saxon and Norman,” said somebody near who was watching them; “what a delicious contrast!”

“They make an exquisite picture,” thought the mother, as she looked with delight and dread:  delight at the beauty; dread that fills the soul of any mother when she feels that she no longer holds her boy,—­that his life has another keeper,—­and queries, “What of the keeper?”

“Well?” she said, looking up at her husband.

“Well,” he answered, with a tone that meant, well.  “She’s thorough-bred.  Democratic or not, I will always insist, blood tells.  Look at her:  no one needs to ask who she is.  I’d take her on trust without a word.”

“So, then, you are not her critic, but her admirer.”

“Ah, my dear, criticism is lost in admiration, and I am glad to find it so.”

“And I. Willie saw with our eyes, as a boy; it is fortunate that we can see with his eyes, as a man.”

So, without any words spoken, after that night, both Mr. and Mrs. Surrey took this young girl into their hearts as they hoped soon to take her into their lives, and called her “daughter” in their thought, as a pleasant preparation for the uttered word by and by.