olly natural.

A St. Bernard dog of superb proportions gambolled at her side.

"I thought it was you," she said. "I am very glad to see you again."

"And I, Miss Windsor, to see you." They shook hands with cordiality.
"And how do you like your new lodgings?" he inquired.

"Ah, Lord Brompton, I was afraid you would feel nettled that we
capitalists should possess your grand old homestead. My purpose in
swooping down upon you in this unceremonious style was to ask you to
make yourself quite at home in the place. Consider it your own if you
will."

"What would your father say to such an arrangement, I wonder?" he asked,
glancing at her.

"Oh," she laughed, "papa monopolizes everybody and everything else, but
I monopolize him. But you look serious, Lord Brompton, and less
complacent, if I may use the expression, than when we met last. Dear old
Paris. That was two years ago."

"Ought I to look complacent after reading in the newspaper that my old
schoolmate, Cedric Ruskin, has been arrested on a charge of high
treason?"

"Alas! poor Cedric!--no, that was Yorick. Down, Bayard, down," she cried
to her dog.

"A great many things may happen in two years, Miss Windsor. When chance
first brought us together, I was a landed proprietor, and the heir of a
noble lineage. To-day I am a beggar at the feet of fatherless wealth."

"Excuse me, Lord Brompton, I have a father."

"Did I say I was at your feet, Miss Windsor?"

"You are the same clever creature as ever," she answered. "But I am
beginning to believe you are in earnest. Is it possible that you are the
Lord Brompton who told me once that fate's quiver held no shaft to
terrify a philosopher? 'Dust to dust, and what matters it whether king
or chaos rule?' Those were your words. I warned you then, but you
laughed me to scorn--"

"And now you are deriding me."

"You are unjust. I met you with a proffer of hospitality, but you would
none of it."

"Am I not to dine with you this evening?"

"True. Then as a further instance that you are still a stoic, come now
and exhibit to me the treasures and secrets of Ripon House. I have got
no farther than the picture gallery as yet. There is an ancestor of
George the Third's time whose features are the prototype of yours--the
same dreamy eye--the same careless smile--the same look of being petted.
You remember I always said you had been spoiled by petting."

She led the way across the lawn, with Bayard bounding close at hand.