the eye to him was
a large cross, set with brilliants, and surmounted by a heavy
double-headed eagle in gold. This ornament dazzled from a conspicuous
place on the left lappet of his coat; on his hand shone a magnificent
diamond ring, and he bore a stately opera-glass, with which, from time
to time, he imperiously, as one may say, surveyed the landscape. As
the imposing apparition grew upon Isa-bel, "O here," she thought, "is
something truly distinguished. Of course, dear," she added aloud to
Basil, "he's some foreign nobleman travelling here"; and she ran over in
her mind the newspaper announcements of patrician visitors from abroad
and tried to identify him with some one of them. The cross must be the
decoration of a foreign order, and Basil suggested that he was perhaps
a member of some legation at Washington, who had ran up there for his
summer vacation. The cross puzzled him, but the double-headed eagle, he
said, meant either Austria or Russia; probably Austria, for the wearer
looked a trifle too civilized for a Russian.

"Yes, indeed! What an air he has. Never tell me. Basil, that there's
nothing in blood!" cried Isabel, who was a bitter aristocrat at heart,
like all her sex, though in principle she was democratic enough. As
she spoke, the object of her regard looked about him on the different
groups, not with pride, not with hauteur, but with a glance of
unconscious, unmistakable superiority. "O, that stare!" she added;
"nothing but high birth and long descent can give it! Dearest, he's
becoming a great affliction to me. I want to know who he is. Couldn't
you invent some pretext for speaking to him?"

"No, I couldn't do it decently; and no doubt he'd snub me as I deserved
if I intruded upon him. Let's wait for fortune to reveal him."

"Well, I suppose I must, but it's dreadful; it's really dreadful. You
can easily see that's distinction," she continued, as her hero moved
about the promenade and gently but loftily made a way for himself among
the other passengers and favored the scenery through his opera-glass
from one point and another. He spoke to no one, and she reasonably
supposed that he did not know English.

In the mean time it was drawing near the hour of dinner, but no dinner
appeared. Twelve, one, two came and went, and then at last came the
dinner, which had been delayed, it seemed, till the cook could recruit
his energies sufficiently to meet the wants of double the number he had
expected to provi