aid
her father to give him her commands. "Dad," she said, "if the Prince of
Markeld asks you for permission to call, you'll tell him he may. It's
just one of these odious Old World customs."

"So I judged," smiled her father. "He seems a nice fellow, and so when
he asked me ten minutes ago, I told him we'd be glad to see him."

"Did--did he mention any particular time?" faltered Sue.

"Why, yes, now I think of it, I believe he said something about this
evening."

"Oh!" gasped Susie, and then closed her lips tightly together. "Well,"
she said to herself, as she turned away, "he hasn't lost any time, to be
sure! I'm afraid he's worse than I thought!"

CHAPTER XII

Events of the Night

Life at Weet-sur-Mer, as at most other places of its class, swung in a
round prescribed by custom, as fixed and predestined as the courses of
the stars. In the late morning occurred the promenade, taken as a brisk
constitutional by a few, but by the great majority as a languid stroll
designed to create an appetite for luncheon. That meal was followed by a
period of torpor, then every one sought the beach--the high, the low;
the rich, the poor; the dowdy and the well-dressed; the virgin in white
and the cocotte in scarlet; the thin and the obese; the French, the
Dutch, the Italian--yea, and the angular English, for Weet-sur-Mer
attracted a crowd as hybrid as its name! There they amused themselves
each after his own fashion, with dignity or abandon, as the case might
be. They could not be said to mingle in the way that an American crowd
would have done under like circumstances--the elements of society in an
aristocratic country are as incapable of mingling as oil and water. The
oil floated placidly on top, while the water disported itself
contentedly beneath.

The oil, to preserve the simile, consisted, in the first place, of a
number of self-important individuals stalking solemnly up and down,
seemingly unconscious of the fact that they were not as solitary as
Crusoe; and, in the second place, of certain solid, cohesive groups,
presenting to the world a front as impenetrable and threatening as any
Austrian phalanx, and guarding in their midst two or three young girls
who must, at any hazard, be kept unspotted from the world. Strange to
say, the girls appeared contented, even happy; the position seemed to
them, no doubt, the normal one for them to occupy--and they could, of
course, look forward with certainty to the opening o