that he was going to a house party at Inverary Castle."

"Whose house is that, Jean?" asked Lucy.

"It is the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Argyll."

"Oh!" Lucy gave a little sigh. Prince Hugo was undeniably fat and very
slow to catch a joke, but there was certainly a different flavor in
this talk of dukes and ancestral seats to the gossip about the Whites
and Greens at home.

Indeed, the whole party, including even Mr. Perry, experienced a
sensation of sudden vacancy and flatness when his Highness left them.
It was as though they had been sheltering a royal eagle that was used
to dwelling in sunlit heights unknown to them, and now they were left
on flat ground to consort with common poultry.

CHAPTER VI

Miss Vance led her party slowly through Scotland and down again to
London. Mrs. Waldeaux went with them. The girls secretly laughed
together at her fine indomitable politeness, and her violent passion
for the Stuarts, and hate of the Roundheads. But Mr. Perry was bored
by her.

"What is it to us," he said, "that Queen Mary paddled over this lake,
or Cromwell's soldiers whitewashed that fresco? Give me a clean, new
American church, anyhow, before all of your mouldy, tomby cathedrals.
These things are so many cancelled cheques to me. I have nothing to
pay on them. It is live issues that draw on my heart. You American
girls ought to be at home looking into the negro problem, or Tammany,
or the Sugar Trust, instead of nosing into Rembrandts, or miracles at
Lourdes, or palaces. These are all back numbers. Write n. g. on them
and bury them. So, by the way, is your Mrs. Waldeaux a back number.
My own opinion is that all men and women at fifty ought to go willingly
and be shut up in the room where the world keeps its second-hand
lumber!"

"Yet nobody," said Lucy indignantly, "is more careful or tender with
Mrs. Waldeaux than you!"

"That is because Mr. Perry has the genuine American awe of people of
good birth," said Jean slyly. "It is the only trait which makes me
suspect that he is a self-made man." Mr. Perry, for answer, only bowed
gravely. He long ago had ceased to hide his opinion that Miss Hassard
was insufferable.

Frances, for her part, was sure that the young people were glad to have
her as a companion. One day she decided to stay with them, and the
next to go to New York on the first steamer. She seemed to see life
hazily, as one over whose mind a cataract was growing. What had she