[Pg 20]

"Oh, no; what have you done?" exclaimed his chum, lifting his handsome head from his lounge amid a cloud of curling, blue cigar-smoke.

"Nothing; I never did anything in my life," in an injured tone, "and I am fain to ask why I am so bitterly persecuted."

"Persecuted?" inquired De Vere, languidly.

"Oh, yes, you can afford to be cool. You are the legal heir to ten thousand a year. You are not at the beck and call of a relative who gives you the most troublesome commissions to execute without so much as saying 'by your leave,'" growled Lancaster.

The young lieutenant laughed lazily.

"You have had a letter from my lady?" he said.

"Yes. Look here, De Vere, I wonder if she thinks I belong to her wholly? Must one be a white slave for the sake of coming into twenty thousand a year?"

"It is worth lots of toadying," declared De Vere, emphatically.

"I used to like Aunt Lydia—rather—before my uncle died," said Lancaster, reflectively. "She was always tart and waspish. I didn't care for it when I didn't have to bear the brunt of it. She rather amused me then, but now I get out of patience with her whims and exactions."

"What is it she wants now?" asked Harry De Vere, lazily.

"It is something I have to carry home to her from New York. By Jove! I have a great mind to refuse. Anything in reason I would willingly undertake; but, ah,[Pg 21] really, this is too bad!" groaned the victim, dropping his head back among the cushions of his chair.

[Pg 21]

It was a handsome head, crowned with short, crisp masses of fair hair, and he was a blue-eyed young giant with the perfect features of an Antinous, and a smile that dazzled one when it played around the full red lips half veiled by the drooping ends of the long, fair mustache. He had an indolent air that was not unbecoming to him, but rather taking than otherwise. He did not look like a man who would overexert himself for anything, and yet the air might have been cultivated and not natural.

"I did not know that there was anything on this side of the 'herring-pond' her ladyship would deign 

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