“Your cousin, I suppose!”

Burnett nodded.

“She wanted you,” he said.  “She’s taken a fancy to you; and she can afford to marry for love,” he added.

“I’m thankful that I can, too,” the other answered fervently.

His friend laughed at the fervor.

“You make me think of her teacher,” he said.  “She sings, and when she was sixteen she meant to outrank Patti; she was lots homelier then.”

“Oh, I say!” Jack cried.  “I can believe ’most anything, but—­”

Burnett laughed and then sobered.

“She was,” he said solemnly; “she really and truly was.  And her mother said to her teacher,—­there in Dresden:  ’She will be the greatest soprano, won’t she?’ And he said:  ’Madame, she has only that one chance—­to be the greatest.’”

Jack laughed.

“But why ’Lorne’?” he asked suddenly.  “Why not ‘Burnett,’ since she’s your uncle’s child?”

“Oh, that’s straight enough; there’s a hyphen there.  My uncle died and my aunt married a title.  My aunt’s Lady Chiheleywicks, but the family name is Lorne.  And you pronounce my aunt’s name Chix.”

“I’m glad I know,” said Jack.

“Oh, we’re great on titles,” said Burnett, modestly.  “If the Boers hadn’t killed Col.  Rosscott, Betty would have been a Lady, too, some day.  But as it is—­” he added thoughtfully, “she’s nothing but a widow.”

“’Nothing but’!” Jack cried indignantly.

“Oh, well,” said Burnett, “of course it’s great, her being a widow—­but then she’d have been great the other way too.”

“But if he was English and a colonel,” Jack said suddenly, “he must have been all of—­”

“Fifty!” interposed Burnett; “oh, he was!  Maybe more, but he dyed his hair.  It was a splendid match for her.  It isn’t every girl who can get a—­”

Their conversation was suddenly cut short by voices, accompanied by a sort of sweet and silky storm of little rustles and the sound of feet—­little feet—­coming down the great hall.  Aunt Mary’s nephew felt himself suddenly wondering if any other fellow present had such a tempest within his bosom as he himself was conscious of attempting to regulate unperceived.

And then, after all, she wasn’t among the influx!  Miss Maude, was, though, and he had to go up to her and talk to her; and terribly dull hard labor it was.

While he was rolling the Sisyphus stone of conversation uphill for the sixth or seventh time, Jack noticed a gentleman pass by and throw a more than ordinarily interesting glance their way.  He was a very well-built, fairly good-sized man of thirty-five or forty years, with a handsome, uninteresting face and heavy, sleepy dark eyes.

“Who is that?” he asked of his companion, his curiosity supplementing his wish that she would begin to bear her share of the burden of her entertainment.

“Don’t you know?” she said in surprise.  “That’s Mr. Holloway.  He’s just come.  Oh, he’s so horrid!  I think he’s just too awfully horrid for any use.”