There entered, in the wake of the butler, a distinguished-looking personage who held out his hand with a perfect copy of the bow that she saw forty times a day.  “He is taking himself very seriously,” she sighed; “he is precisely like anybody else!” And she felt her interest snuffed out by Tommy’s correctness.  But, directly, she changed her mind; the unfailing charm of his race asserted itself in Tommy; she decided that he was a delightful, original young man, and in ten minutes they were talking in the same odd confidence that had always marked their relation.

“How perfectly you are gotten up!  Are you inside, now?”

“Ah, do you remember that?” said he; “that’s awfully good of you.  Which is so fortunate as to please you, my clothes or my deportment?”

“Both.  They are very good.  Where did you get them, Tommy?  I shall take the privilege of my age and call you Tommy.”

“Thank you.  The clothes?  Oh, I asked Harry for the proper thing, and he recommended a tailor.  I think Harry gave me the manners, too.”

“And your new principles?” She could not resist this little fling.

“I owe a great deal in that way to Harry, also,” answered he, with gravity.

Gone were the days of sarcastic ridicule, of visionary politics.  Tommy talked of the civil service in the tone of Harry himself.  He was actually eloquent.

“Why, Aunt Margaret, he is a remarkable young man,” exclaimed Miss Van Harlem; “his honesty and enthusiasm are refreshing in this pessimist place.  I hope he will come again.  Did you notice what lovely eyes he has?”

Before long it was not pure good-nature that caused Mrs. Carriswood to ask Fitzmaurice to her house.  He was known as a rising young man, One met him at the best houses; yet he was a prodigious worker, and had made his mark in committees, before the celebrated speech that sent him into all the newspaper columns, or that stubborn and infinitely versatile fight against odds which inspired the artist of puck.

Tommy bore the cartoon to Mrs. Carriswood, beaming.  She had not seen that light in his face since the memorable June afternoon in the Opera-house.  He sent the paper to his mother, who vowed the picture “did not favor Tommy at all, at all.  Sure Tommy never had such a red nose!” The old man, however, went to his ex-saloon, and sat in state all the morning, showing Tommy’s funny picture.

It was about this time that Mrs. Carriswood observed something that took her breath away:  Tommy Fitzmaurice had the presumption to be attentive to my lady’s goddaughter, Miss Van Harlem.  Nor was this the worst; there were indications that Miss Van Harlem, who had refused the noble names and titles of two or three continental nobles, and the noble name unaccompanied by a title of the younger son of an English earl, without mentioning the half-dozen “nice” American claimants—­Miss Van Harlem was not angry.