the Monsons, being at Hurlingham one day, had her pointed out to them as a new American girl, who was the idol of a millionaire uncle.  She was not living in an ultra fashionable quarter, or with ultra fashionable people, but she was, on all occasions, they heard, beautifully dressed and beautifully—­if a little heavily—­hung with gauds and gems, her rings being said to be quite amazing and suggesting an impassioned lavishness on the part of Uncle James.  London, having become inured to American marvels—­Milly’s bit of it—­accepted and enjoyed Uncle James and all the sumptuous attributes of his Dakota.

English people would swallow anything sometimes, Mrs. Monson commented sagely, and yet sometimes they stared and evidently thought you were lying about the simplest things.  Milly’s corner of South Kensington had gulped down the Dakota uncle.  Her managing in this way, if there was no uncle, was too clever and amusing.  She had left her mother at home to scrimp and save, and by hook or by crook she had contrived to get a number of quite good things to wear.  She wore them with such an air of accustomed resource that the jewels might easily—­mixed with some relics of her mother’s better days—­be of the order of the clever little Parisian diamond crescent.  It was Milly’s never-laid-aside manner which did it.  The announcement of her union with Sir Arthur Bowen was received in certain New York circles with little suppressed shrieks of glee.  It had been so sharp of her to aim low and to realise so quickly that she could not aim high.  The baronetcy was a recent one, and not unconnected with trade.  Sir Arthur was not a rich man, and, had it leaked out, believed in Uncle James.  If he did not find him all his fancy painted, Milly was clever enough to keep him quiet.  She was, when all was said and done, one of the American women of title, her servants and the tradespeople addressed her as “my lady,” and with her capacity for appropriating what was most useful, and her easy assumption of possessing all required, she was a very smart person indeed.  She provided herself with an English accent, an English vocabulary, and an English manner, and in certain circles was felt to be most impressive.

At an afternoon function in the country Mrs. Vanderpoel had met Lady Bowen.  She had been one of the few kindly ones, who in the past had given an occasional treat to Milly Jones for her girlhood’s sake.  Lady Bowen, having gathered a small group of hearers, was talking volubly to it, when the nice woman entered, and, catching sight of her, she swept across the room.  It would not have been like Milly to fail to see and greet at once the wife of Reuben Vanderpoel.  She would count anywhere, even in London sets it was not easy to connect one’s self with.  She had already discovered that there were almost as many difficulties to be surmounted in London by the wife of an unimportant baronet as there had been to be overcome in New York by a girl without money or place.  It was well to have something in the way of information to offer in one’s small talk with the lucky ones and Milly knew what subject lay nearest to Mrs. Vanderpoel’s heart.