ne thing--herders of books and prints in
the British Museum; specialists in scarabs, cartouches, and dynasties
Egyptian; rovers and raiders from the heart of unknown lands;
toxicologists; orchid-hunters; monographers on flint implements,
carpets, prehistoric man, or early Renaissance music. They came, and
they played with him. They asked no questions; they cared not so much as
a pin who or what he was. They demanded only that he should be able to
talk and listen courteously. Their work was done elsewhere and out of
his sight.

There were also women.

"Never," said Wilton Sargent to himself, "has an American seen England
as I'm seeing it"; and he thought, blushing beneath the bedclothes, of
the unregenerate and blatant days when he would steam to office, down
the Hudson, in his twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht, and
arrive, by gradations, at Bleecker Street, hanging on to a leather
strap between an Irish washerwoman and a German anarchist. If any of
his guests had seen him then they would have said: "How distinctly
American!" and--Wilton did not care for that tone. He had schooled
himself to an English walk, and, so long as he did not raise it, an
English voice. He did not gesticulate with his hands; he sat down on
most of his enthusiasms, but he could not rid himself of The Shibboleth.
He would ask for the Worcestershire sauce: even Howard, his immaculate
butler, could not break him of this.

It was decreed that he should complete his education in a wild and
wonderful manner, and, further, that I should be in at that death.

Wilton had more than once asked me to Holt Hangars, for the purpose of
showing how well the new life fitted him, and each time I had declared
it creaseless. His third invitation was more informal than the others,
and he hinted of some matter in which he was anxious for my sympathy or
counsel, or both. There is room for an infinity of mistakes when a man
begins to take liberties with his nationality; and I went down expecting
things. A seven-foot dog-cart and a groom in the black Holt Hangars
livery met me at Amberley Royal. At Holt Hangars I was received by
a person of elegance and true reserve, and piloted to my luxurious
chamber. There were no other guests in the house, and this set me
thinking.

Wilton came into my room about half an hour before dinner, and
though his face was masked with a drop-curtain of highly embroidered
indifference, I could see that he was not at ease. In tim