ell-clothed, carefully
reared American girl, but her gestures, the silent, unsmiling way in
which she received what was said to her--something indefinably alert and
self-masterful without being self-conscious--gave her a mysterious
charm.

She was profoundly absorbed in the great, historic river on her right,
and yet she did not cry out as other girls of her age would have done.
She read her folder and kept vigilant eyes upon all the passing points
of interest--even as Haney rumbled on about Charles and his father and
Kate--more than half distraught by the vague recollections she had of
her school histories and geographies. How little she knew! "I must
buckle down to some kind of study," she repeatedly said to herself, as
if it helped her to a more inflexible resolution.

Soon the mighty city and its fabled sea-shore began to scare her soul
with vague alarms and exultations. Manhattan was as remote to her as
London, and as splendidly alien as Paris. It was, indeed, both London
and Paris to her. Its millions of people appalled her. How could so many
folk live in one place?

Again the magic power of money bucklered her. It was good to think that
they were to go to the best hotels, and that she had no need to trouble
herself about anything, for Lucius settled everything. He telegraphed
for rooms, he assembled all their baggage and tipped their porters: and
when they rushed into the long tunnel in Harlem he was free to take the
Captain by the arm and help him to the forward end of the car ready to
alight, leaving Bertha to follow without so much as a satchel to burden
her arm. Haney had accepted Lucius' assurance that the Park Palace was
the smart hostelry, and to this they drove as to some unknown inn in a
foreign capital.

It was gorgeous enough to belong in the tale of Aladdin's lamp--a
palace, in very truth, with entrance-hall in keeping with the
glittering, roaring Avenue through which they drove, and which was to
Bertha quite as strange as a boulevard in Berlin would have been. Lucius
conducted them into the reception-room with an air of proprietorship,
and soon had waiters, maids and bell-boys "jumping." His management was
masterful. He knew just what time to give each man, and just how much to
say concerning his master and mistress. He conveyed to the clerk that
while Captain Haney didn't want any foolish display, he liked things
comfortable round him, and the colored man's tone, as he spoke that word
"comforta