ce removed'--across the Atlantic. You
might be quite happy and content among them. Just so."

"Oh, yes, I am sure I shall. You are quite in the right in what you say
of them," Mr. Heathcote eagerly replied.

And Sir Robert, who had purposely laid this trap for him, thought to
himself, "The boy is certainly in love. I must find out all about it,
unless he has the grace to tell me himself."

Much as she liked Niagara, Miss Noel was not sorry, after long delay, to
get a letter from Sir Robert, asking her to join him in Chicago, and
telling her of a delightful visit he had made to Richmond, where he had
been received "with particular kindness" and had met a great number of
agreeable people, most of them Virginians of the modern type and
scarcely so interesting, in a way, as the Aglonby family, who, as he saw
from other individuals, were survivals of a generation rapidly
disappearing, to be found only occasionally here and there now,--"a
class of aristocrats long a curious anomaly in a republican state,
hardly to be matched in Europe to-day outside of Austria, and never to
be reproduced."

It did not take Parsons long to do the necessary packing; but Miss Noel
consumed a whole day in putting up her carefully-labelled "specimens of
the flora of New York;" and Ethel had to settle with Mr. Bates, who
would doubtless rather have been rejected by an English-woman than
accepted by any American, and was not denied that luxury.

From Chicago the reunited forces went off almost immediately to Salt
Lake City, having only three days to give to a little hurried
sight-seeing in the "marvellous Sphinx city," as they called it in their
letters home.

At Salt Lake Mrs. Sykes was awaiting their arrival, and betrayed a
radiant satisfaction at the first glance.

"You can't think how busy I have been and what a lot I have
accomplished," she related exultantly. "I have found a whole village of
Thompsons with a _p_, and went and boarded there, and have got up a book
that Bentley will give me a hundred pounds for. And I have done a lot of
sketches to illustrate it, and, so far from being out of pocket, shall
have made by my American tour. It has been the greatest fun imaginable,
poking about in their houses and dishing them up afterward. And, only
fency, I've got a lock of Brigham Young's hair, _well authenticated_. I
palmed myself off on a person that I met as being a very great admirer
of his, and she gave me it. When I get home I'm goin