hundred years."

"Old acres," her ladyship admitted, cautiously, "always make for respectability."

"Besides," John carelessly threw out, "he's a baronet."

Lady Blanchemain sat up. "A baronet?" she said. "An American?"

"Alas, yes," said John, "a mere American. And one of the earliest creations,—by James the First, no less. His patent dates from 1612. But he doesn't use the title. He regards it, he pretends, as merged in a higher dignity."

"What higher dignity?" asked the lady, frowning.

"That of an American citizen, he says," chuckled John.

"Brrr!" she breathed, impatient.

"And moreover," John gaily continued, "besides being descended from the Pilgrim Fathers, he's descended in other lines from half the peerage of Seventeenth Century England. And to top up with, if you please, he's descended from Alfred the Great. He's only an American, but he can show a clear descent bang down from Alfred the Great! I think the most exquisite, the most subtle and delicate pleasure I have ever experienced has been to see English people, people of yesterday, cheerfully patronizing him."

"You've enlarged my sphere of knowledge," said Lady Blanchemain, grimly. "I had never known that there was blood in America. Does this prodigious personage talk through his nose?"

"Worse luck, no," said John. "I wish he did—a little—just enough to smack of his soil, to possess local colour. No, he talks for all the world like you or me,—which exposes him to compliments in England. 'An American? Really?' our tactful people cry, when he avows his nationality 'Upon my word, I should never have suspected it.'"

"I suppose, with all the rest, he's rich?" asked Lady Blanchemain.

"Immensely," assented John. "Speaking of Fortune and her favours, she's withheld none from him."

"Then he's good-looking, too?"

"He looks like a Man," said John.

"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, moving. "If I had received a wire from a creature of such proportions, I've a feeling I'd answer it."

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