ous eyes.

"Is--is--my sister there?"

"I'm expecting her with my mother every moment," responded this
youthful but ingenious diplomatist sweetly; "she might be here now;
but," she added with a sudden heart-broken flash of sympathy, "I know
HOW anxious you both must be. I'LL take you to her now. Only one
moment, please." The opportunity of leading this handsome savage as it
were in chains across the parade, before everybody, her father, her
mother, her sister, and HIS--was not to be lost. She darted into the
house, and reappeared with the daintiest imaginable straw hat on the
side of her head, and demurely took her place at his side. "It's only
over there, at Major Bromley's," she said, pointing to one of the
vine-clad cottage quarters; "but you are a stranger here, you know, and
might get lost."

Alas! he was already that. For keeping step with those fairy-like
slippers, brushing awkwardly against that fresh and pretty skirt, and
feeling the caress of the soft folds; looking down upon the brim of
that beribboned little hat, and more often meeting the upturned blue
eyes beneath it, Jim was suddenly struck with a terrible conviction of
his own contrasting coarseness and deficiencies. How hideous those
oiled canvas fishing-trousers and pilot jacket looked beside this
perfectly fitted and delicately gowned girl! He loathed his collar,
his jersey, his turned-back sou'wester, even his height, which seemed
to hulk beside her--everything, in short, that the girl had recently
admired. By the time that they had reached Major Bromley's door he had
so far succumbed to the fair enchantress and realized her ambition of a
triumphant procession, that when she ushered him into the presence of
half a dozen ladies and gentlemen he scarcely recognized his sister as
the centre of attraction, or knew that Miss Cicely's effusive greeting
of Maggie was her first one. "I knew he was dying to see you after all
you had BOTH passed through, and I brought him straight here," said the
diminutive Machiavelli, meeting the astonished gaze of her father and
the curious eyes of her sister with perfect calmness, while Maggie,
full of gratitude and admiration of her handsome brother, forgot his
momentary obliviousness, and returned her greeting warmly.
Nevertheless, there was a slight movement of reserve among the
gentlemen at the unlooked-for irruption of this sunburnt Adonis, until
Calvert, disengaging himself from Maggie's side, came forwar