g that sounded rather like "I say!" and vaguely
like "By Jove!"

"No bad news, I hope?" inquired the lady, sympathetic, and trying to
speak as if she didn't know what curiosity meant.

"Excellent news, on the contrary," said John, "but a bolt from the
blue." And he offered her the paper.

"Am on my way to Rome," she read aloud. "Could I come to you for a day?
Winthorpe, Hotel Cavour, Milan."--"Winthorpe?" She pursed her lips, as
one tasting something. "I don't know the name. Who is he? What's his
County?" she demanded,--she, who carried the County Families in her
head.

John chuckled. "He hasn't got a County--he's only an American," he said,
pronouncing that genial British formula with intention.

"Oh," sighed Lady Blanchemain, her expectations dashed; and drawing in
her skirts, she sank a little deeper into her corner.

"He hasn't got a County," repeated John. "But he's far and away the
greatest swell I know."

"A swell? An American?" Lady Blanchemain pressed down her lips, and gave
a movement to her shoulders.

"An aristocrat, a patrician," said John.

"Fudge!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Americans and Australians--they're
anything you like, but they're never that."

John laughed. "I adore," he said, "our light and airy British way of
tarring Americans and Australians with the same brush,--the descendants
of transported convicts and the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers!"

"Is your Winthorpe man a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers?" asked Lady
Blanchemain, dryly.

"Indeed he is," said John. "He's descended from ten separate individuals
who made the first voyage in the _Mayflower_. And he holds, by-the-by,
intact, the lands that were ceded to his family by the Indians the year
after. That ought to recommend him to your Ladyship,--an unbroken tenure
of nearly three hundred years."

"Old acres," her ladyship admitted, cautiously, "always make for
respectability."

"Besides," John carelessly threw out, "he's a baronet."

Lady Blanchemain sat up. "A baronet?" she said. "An American?"

"Alas, yes," said John, "a mere American. And one of the earliest
creations,--by James the First, no less. His patent dates from 1612. But
he doesn't use the title. He regards it, he pretends, as merged in a
higher dignity."

"What higher dignity?" asked the lady, frowning.

"That of an American citizen, he says," chuckled John.

"Brrr!" she breathed, impatient.

"And moreover," John gaily continued, "besides being desc