pped out an hour ago? eh,
lass?" queried the old man, grasping her hand. "But 'tis all one,
Thankful: 'twas not for him I stopped you. There is a young spark with
him,--ay, came even as you left, lass,--a likely young gallant; and he
and the count are jabbering away in their own lingo, a kind of Italian,
belike; eh, Thankful?"

"I know not," she said thoughtfully. "Which way came the other?" In
fact, a fear that this young stranger might have witnessed the
captain's embrace began to creep over her.

"From town, my lass."

Thankful turned to her father as if she had been waiting a reply to a
long-asked question: "Well?"

"Were it not well to put on a few furbelows and a tucker?" queried the
old man. "'Tis a gallant young spark; none of your country folk."

"No," said Thankful, with the promptness of a woman who was looking her
best, and knew it. And the old man, looking at her, accepted her
judgment, and without another word led her to the parlor door, and,
opening it, said briefly, "My daughter, Mistress Thankful Blossom."

With the opening of the door came the sound of earnest voices that
instantly ceased upon the appearance of Mistress Thankful. Two
gentlemen lolling before the fire arose instantly, and one came forward
with an air of familiar yet respectful recognition.

"Nay, this is far too great happiness, Mistress Thankful," he said,
with a strongly marked foreign accent, and a still more strongly marked
foreign manner. "I have been in despair, and my friend here, the Baron
Pomposo, likewise."

The slightest trace of a smile, and the swiftest of reproachful
glances, lit up the dark face of the baron as he bowed low in the
introduction. Thankful dropped the courtesy of the period,--i. e., a
duck, with semicircular sweep of the right foot forward. But the right
foot was so pretty, and the grace of the little figure so perfect, that
the baron raised his eyes from the foot to the face in serious
admiration. In the one rapid feminine glance she had given him, she
had seen that he was handsome; in the second, which she could not help
from his protracted silence, she saw that his beauty centred in his
girlish, half fawn-like dark eyes.

"The baron," explained Mr. Blossom, rubbing his hands together as if
through mere friction he was trying to impart a warmth to the reception
which his hard face discountenanced,--"the baron visits us under
discouragement. He comes from far countries. It is the cust