rmed, the
blitheness deepened in the great woman's eyes.

"Well, _ma cherie_," she remarked, "How goes it?" She spoke in French.

"Very well, _ma bien aimee_," Miss Scrotton replied in the same
language. Her French was correct, but Mercedes often made playful
sallies at the expense of her accent. She preferred not to talk in
French. And when Madame von Marwitz went on to ask her where her fellow
_convives_ were, it was in English that she answered, "I don't know
where they all are--I have been busy writing letters; Mrs. Asprey and
Lady Rose are driving, I know, and Mr. Asprey and Mr. Drew I saw in the
smoking-room as I passed. The Marquis I don't think is down yet, nor
Mrs. Furnivall; the young people are playing tennis, I suppose."

Miss Scrotton looked about the terrace with its rhythmic tubs of
flowering trees, its groups of chairs, its white silk parasols, and then
wandered to the parapet to turn and glance up at the splendid copy of an
Italian villa that rose above it. "It is really very beautiful,
Mercedes," she observed. "It becomes the more significant from being so
isolated, so divorced from what we are accustomed to find in Europe as a
setting for such a place, doesn't it? Just as, I always think, the
people of the Asprey type, the best this country has to offer, are more
significant, too, for being picked out from so much that is
indistinguishable. I do flatter myself, darling, that in this visit, at
least, I've been able to offer you something really worth your while,
something that adds to your experience of people and places. You _are_
enjoying yourself," said Miss Scrotton with a manner of sad
satisfaction.

"Yes; truly," Madame von Marwitz made genial reply. "The more so for
finding myself surrounded by so many old acquaintances. It is a
particular pleasure to see again Lady Rose and the vivacious and
intelligent Mrs. Furnivall; it was in Venice that we last met; her
Palazzo there you must one day see. Monsieur de Hautefeuille and Mr.
Drew I counted already as friends in Europe."

"And Mrs. Asprey you will soon count as one, I hope. She is really a
somewhat remarkable woman. She comes, you know, of one of their best and
oldest families."

"Oh, for that, no; not remarkable. Good, if you will--_bon comme du
pain_; it strikes me much, that goodness, among these American rich whom
we are accustomed to hear so crudely caricatured in Europe;--and it is
quite a respectable little aristocracy. They ally t