ture in
compensation had granted her a certain wildness of spirit that sprang
spontaneously to meet the pleasure, trifling or great, of the mere
present; no matter for how long a period, or how hard, its wings had
been smitten.

So she danced, and talked far more than was her wont, surpassing herself
in every way, and no more interested in poor Hexam than in twenty
others. He took her in to supper, however, and after three hours of
dancing she was glad to rest and be sheltered by his determined bulk,
planted squarely before her corner. She knew that she had a coronet very
close to her footstool, and that this brilliant night might be but the
prologue to a lifetime of the only society in the world worth while, but
she was not conscious of any desire beyond the brimming cup of the
moment. Moreover, she had never so thoroughly enjoyed being a girl, and
love-making would have bored her grievously.

The duke claimed her, and after a desultory tour of the great
reception-rooms and an infinite number of little cabinets, containing
some of the most valuable of the Japanese and Indian treasures, he led
her to the library, a luxurious room conducive to rapid friendship.

With that amiable desire, peculiar to the kindly Englishman, to gratify
the ingenuous curiosity of the American, he produced a huge leather
volume containing the various patents of nobility that marked the upward
evolution of his house from a barony in some remote period of the
world's history to the present dukedom, and the royal letters that had
accompanied them. It was something he never would have dreamed of doing
for a stranger of his own country, or of any state in Europe, but the
English humor Americans that please them much as they would engaging
children; and Isabel's eyes sparkled with so lively an intelligence that
the duke fancied she had literary intentions and might one day find
such information useful. He even showed her his complicated
coat-of-arms, which included a bend sinister, for he had royal blood in
his veins; and this slanting rod interested Isabel as deeply as the moat
under the window. She was even more interested in the duke's attitude;
it was evident that he felt no more vanity in his royal descent than
deprecation of its irregular cause and enduring emblem. It was, and that
was the end of it; but he had quite enough imagination to appreciate the
effect of so picturesque an incident in family history upon the mind of
the young repub