"there you have a young man remarkable for two things: his dullness and
his effrontery. Did you hear how he spoke of his benefactor? The wretch!
After all that good, poor Mr. Gwynn has done for him!"

"How do you know what Mr. Gwynn has done for him?"

Dorothy, while she confessed the justice of her mother's strictures,
felt uncommonly inclined to defend the absent one. Her memory of those
tender glances was coming back.

"Why, it is all over town! Mr. Storms is dependent on Mr. Gwynn. By the
way, I hope Count Storri did not meet him?" This was given in the rising
inflection of a query.

"Only for a moment," returned Dorothy, breaking into a little crow of
laughter. "The Count did not seem to like him." Dorothy thought of that
combat of the hands, and how Storri was beaten to his knee, and how
fiercely glorious Richard looked at that instant.

"What should you expect?" observed Mrs. Hanway-Harley. "The Count is a
nobleman. And that reminds me: Dorothy, he appears a bit smitten. What
if it were to prove serious?"

"You wouldn't have me marry him, mamma?"

"What! Not marry a Count!" Mrs. Hanway-Harley was shocked as only an
American mother could have been shocked. She appealed to the ceiling
with her horrified hands. "Oh! the callousness of children!" she cried.
Following this outburst of despair, Mrs. Hanway-Harley composed herself.
"We need not consider that now; it will be soon enough when the Count
offers us his hand." Mrs. Hanway-Harley sank back in her chair with
closed eyes and saw a vision of herself at the Court of the Czar. Then
she continued her thoughts aloud. "It's more than likely, my dear, that
the Czar would appoint Count Storri Ambassador to Washington."

"It would be extremely intelligent of the Czar, I'm sure," returned
Dorothy with a twinkle.

The next morning a colored youth clad in the garish livery of an Avenue
florist made his appearance on the Harley premises bearing aloft an
armful of flowers as large as a sheaf of wheat. By the card they were
for "Miss Harley." The morning following, and every morning, came the
colored youth bearing an odorous armful. Who were they from? The card
told nothing; it was the handwriting of the florist.

"Don't you think it might be Count Storri?" said Dorothy demurely,
taking her pretty nose--the nose Richard saved--out of the flowers.
"Those Russians are so extravagant, so eccentric!"

"Suppose I thank him for them," observed Mrs. Hanway-Harley; "that