uld she be called attractive?" asked Mrs. de Tracy with surprise.

"Oh, yes, without a doubt!"

"In gentlemen's eyes, I suppose you mean?" said Miss Smeardon.

"Yes, in gentlemen's eyes," answered Lavendar, firmly. "Those of women
are apparently furnished with different lenses. But here comes the
fair object of our discussion, so we must decide it later on."

The question of ancestors, a favourite one at Stoke Revel, came up in
the course of the next evening's conversation, and Lavendar found
Robinette a trifle flushed but smiling under a double fire of
questions from Mrs. de Tracy and her companion. Mrs. de Tracy was in
her usual chair, knitting; Miss Smeardon sat by the table with a piece
of fancy-work; Robinette had pulled a foot-stool to the hearthrug and
sat as near the flames as she conveniently could. She shielded her
face with the last copy of _Punch_, and let her shoulders bask in the
warmth of the fire, which made flickering shadows on her creamy neck.
Her white skirts swept softly round her feet, and her favourite
turquoise scarf made a note of colour in her lap. She was one of those
women who, without positive beauty, always make pictures of
themselves.

Lavendar analyzed her looks as he joined the circle, pretending to
read. "She isn't posing," he thought, "but she ought to be painted.
She ought always to be painted, each time one sees her, for
everything about her suggests a portrait. That blue ribbon in her hair
is fairly distracting! What the dickens is the reason one wants to
look at her all the time! I've seen far handsomer women!"

"Do you use Burke and Debrett in your country, Mrs. Loring?" Miss
Smeardon was enquiring politely, as she laid down one red volume after
the other, having ascertained the complete family tree of a lady who
had called that afternoon.

Robinette smiled. "I'm afraid we've nothing but telephone or business
directories, social registers, and 'Who's Who,' in America," she
said.

"You are not interested in questions of genealogy, I suppose?" asked
Mrs. de Tracy pityingly.

"I can hardly say that. But I think perhaps that we are more occupied
with the future than with the past."

"That is natural," assented the lady of the Manor, "since you have so
much more of it, haven't you? But the mixture of races in your
country," she continued condescendingly, "must have made you
indifferent to purity of strain."

"I hope we are not wholly indifferent," said Robinette, as thoug