reckon with them in spite of itself. To be at Allonby on such an occasion was, no doubt, to endure intolerable boredom; yet not to be there was, in some measure, to be classed. The prince was eminently "serious"; and it was well understood that when his day came society would have to toe the line.

The figurative expression bore a literal reference. It was really a question of the right sort of toe for the purpose. The illustrious person was familiarly known to the set as "Young Square Toes." This meant nothing to the prejudice of his bootmaker, but only that the customer, in spite of a limited count of years, was smitten with incurable age of mind. Some of those who called him Square Toes were hoary with eld; but that did not matter. Their "footwear" was their accepted symbol of eternal youth. One symbol will serve as well as another to signify the most profound difference in the view of life. At one time, as we know, it was the cut in love-locks; to-day it is the cut in shoe-leather: yet Cavalier and Roundhead maintain their everlasting conflict amid the changes of form. And, after all, the more joyous party may easily be commended to our sense of dignity by regarding them as a sort of Pointed Order of the fabric of state.

The Square Toes, by common consent of the others, stood for the dullness of respectability and the gloom of the moral law-in fact, for the reaction toward puritanism in a court that had long been going it too fast. The Points, as they were familiarly called, were for the joie de vivre, and for every other felicitous phrase that signified the yearning for a good time. They were for taking this life in a galliard and in a coranto, whatever might be the fortunes of the next.

It was war to the knife between them, as a matter of course, though their animosity was naturally tempered in expression by their good breeding. The Squares detested the Points as threatening ruin to the nation and discredit to the throne. The Points despised and ridiculed the Squares as killjoys whose coming supremacy in the course of nature meant sackcloth for court-dress.

Many a Point disappeared beneath the blue pencil in the course of revision. Some got through by a timely fit of mealymouthedness, or by good judgment in lying

low. It would have been impossible to sacrifice all of them. If the proscription had been too rigorous, there might have been no house-party.

When all was done, the factions were exceedingly well defined. The Squares included that unblemished nobleman the Earl of Ogreby, whose acquaintance Augusta had made soon after her arrival, with several members of his family. The earl was known for the rigor of his evangelical principles and for the studied simplicity of his life. Whatever else was served at his board, boiled mutton always had a place there; and, by friendly consultation with his tailor, he had contrived to introduce homespun into the composition of his dress-suit. His hose, for all occasions, were of hodden-gray. You might have ruled a ledger with the ends of his shoes. These circumstances, however, are of minor importance, for of course the actual costume of the sections was only in accidental conformity with their symbolic name. The earl was accompanied by his son and heir, Lord Beglerbeg, who stood high in Christian Science, and by a daughter, Lady Francesca Darton, who held a humble rank in the Salvation Army, and wore its serge, its bonnet, and its badge in the most glittering throngs. This was the best the neighborhood could afford in the ultra-respectability of devotion. But that qualification was not exacted by the illustrious visitors, who asked only for decency. Two or three ministers and as many of the highest judges supplied gravity without any admixture of the ridiculous. With these were a few who looked in vain for an opening in great affairs, and who were part of that strength of England which is running to waste for want of organization. Mr. Bascomb, the High-church dignitary of Slocum Magna, was almost of the party, though he was not in social residence. But he came and went by special desire of Mr. Gooding, who had a great respect for him, and by pressing invitation of Augusta. Another contingent, quite after the prince's own heart, was that of the sportsmen, who, for the most part, were saved from frivolity by the manliness of their tastes.

The Points were variously composed. There was Mr. Kenneth McAlister Bruce, a magnate of modern finance who had nothing of the Scotsman but the astuteness and the name. It was enough, especially

the first. He had shootings in the Highlands, a house in Park Lane, a hand in well-nigh every enterprise of moment in the country, though ostensibly his transactions were confined to the China trade. You found him everywhere. You burrowed into underground tubes: there he was. You coquetted with new and farreaching patents: he was there, too. He financed—there it was, in a word. He was ready with the requisite subvention for every good thing going. Had he been present at the rise of Mohammedanism, he would have found the money for the advance on Mecca, and secured exclusive banking privileges with the new faith. He bore arms-on his note-paper; he spoke English with the accent of Frankfort; he was bold and resolute, and in the further reaches of his operations he was, no doubt, a man of blood at need. But with his command of the best legal advice he could take a pound of flesh without any fear of the law. Neither his feet nor his manners were made for the Pointed style, and he walked Turkish carpets as uneasily as the ancient chief of his order walked the burning marl. He had the bluffness of his tremendous consciousness of strength, and, in all his transactions with his fellow-men, a sort of terrifying air of throwing off the mask. He was rude to them. They knew it, and knew that he knew it, too. Therein was one of the secrets of his power. He had obliged the royal house; and while, with them, he paid due regard to the forms, he made no difficulty of alluding to the duke's chief guest as the youngster," over his cigar. Women of the highest rank he snubbed to their faces in return for his encouragement of their futile hopes for information as to the way to get rich.

In his division, and, to some extent, in his train, was a courtly set of young men from Oxford, all of good birth, and with nothing but good breeding for their share of its supposed heritage of the humanities. They were young men who believed in making great strokes on the stock exchange and enjoying life-not coarsely, indeed, for they knew the value of refinement in pleasure as an element of staying power. They had found what they conceived was a short cut to that Epicurean goal for which men have so long striven-a state in which we may neither suffer nor fear, a state of the absence of pain in the body and of trouble

in the mind. In this respect they were the very latest outcome of Oxford culture, and their rise had providentially synchronized with the world-embracing bequest of Mr. Rhodes.

Another social interest was represented by the services, and by the army in particular. These persons, high in command, knew that they had a good thing in our military system, and meant to hold it for themselves and their dependents, at least quite as firmly as they could have held a beleaguered fort. They were already casting far-seeing glances to the future, when the close of the war might bring home a victorious general whose soul hungered to restore the Roman discipline and the Roman simplicity. They had no ill will for that general, but they wished to put him in his place, and they were determined to balk his berserker rage against incompetence by keeping the supreme control of the military machine in their own hands. They were accordingly preparing for his promotion to a post of great dignity beyond the seas to which he might employ his ravening energies with profit to the country, without disturbing the even tenor of their own way.

At the head of a section more immediately devoted to the arts was an amiable nobleman who enjoyed a great reputation as a collector. In a richly stocked land such as England, the gathering of pictures and statuary is mainly a thing of the past. The old country has all it wants in that line, and, besides, America has grown so insistent. But the curious has taken the place of the beautiful, and the culture of the postage-stamp shows that wealth and research need never be without an object. The nobleman in question had discovered a new hobby. Playbills were denied him by mere anticipation. It was the same with china and the various forms of hardware. But there remained one line of virgin enterprise- omnibus and tram-car tickets. He had begun to collect these treasures for the benefit of posterity too late in their history to give him the command of them at cost price. But he was willing to pay handsomely for his neglect, and he had secured with incredible pains the first issues of nearly all the southern lines of the metropolis, and well-nigh every example of the northern section dating from the period of the assumption of control by the County Council. Of one or two of these, indeed,

he possessed costly proofs before lettersspecimens without the stamp of their date. He was also by no means ill provided with foreign examples, and he had paid particular attention to the transatlantic, in the modest hope of contributing his quota to the promotion of the American alliance. His albums, adorned with a book-plate of his coronet and the well-known motto, "Punch, brothers, punch; punch with care," boasted a first Milwaukee and an earliest San Francisco; and he was now in treaty for a primitive Salt Lake City, which had necessitated advances, not altogether agreeable in themselves, to the successors of the Mormon prophet.

He was fortunate in finding a contingent of Americans at Allonby on this occasion to sympathize with his efforts, if not to aid him in his work. One or two of these were actually English by adoption, and even by the change of nationality. They had all the peculiarities of local accent, and even the tricks of manner-at times in the proportions of caricature. They were even prepared to suggest a belief that the Declaration of Independence was only a regrettable fit of temper, and that, by a proper exercise of forbearance on the part of the mother-country, it might yet admit of modifications importing a return to more filial sentiments. These were present, not by the good will of the duchess, but by the request of the royal pair. It was appropriate, after a fashion, for they were of those who are more royalist than the king. They had caught everything of the tone of a ruling caste, except, perhaps, the necessary reserves of prudence. Their estates on English soil were managed with a rigor of the rights of possession which gave the wandering lover of the beautiful no share in their glories and the resident poor but scant hopes of the falling crumb.

XXIX

THE arrival was in semi-state. The duke awaited the royal pair at the station with postilions and outriders. The Volunteers performed the services for which Volunteers appear to exist in peaceful climes. Augusta, looking her loveliest, was at her threshold. To a nice observer her smile of welcome might have seemed to lack conviction. Circumstances had somewhat shaken her faith in the institutions of which

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the symbols were the glittering pageant, the bowing pair, and the roaring crowds. Though the village made as much noise as ever, she could not but be aware of the two souls that had dropped out of its reckoning since she herself came to Allonby with blare of trumpet and beat of drum. The Knuckle of Veal, however, demonstrated as cheerily as though nothing had happened. Job Gurt toasted the royal family in the parlor. Mr. Grimber gave them personal encouragement with heart, or at any rate with hat and voice, outside. He was ably seconded by Mr. Raif, who led the shouting of the village choir. Mary and her father were among the first to be presented. Mr. Kisbye was effectually absent, as before; yet, for all that, he contrived to signalize his existence by a flaunting banner and the discharge of an impertinent gun.

A glance at the chief guest served to show the extreme injustice of party nomenclature. He had been seriously maligned by his nickname. His toe-caps would have gone through the eye of a needle. Nor was there the slightest severity in his manner. His air was not wanting in cordiality; and if he had a fault, it was only in a certain suffusion of correctness. It was probably only an effect of shyness: he seemed to have been exceedingly well brought up.

His demeanor toward the Points left little to be desired. He seemed absolutely unaware of their existence as a faction, and he received their homage as though rehearsing for his future part of the father of all his people. His consort followed his lead. Their ladies and gentlemen in attendance bore themselves with less tact, and were to be suspected of a sniff.

There was barely time to dress for the great dinner which was the chief ceremonial feature of the day. The luggage poured in from the distant railway-station in the wake of the visitors, and the village kept in line to cheer the brakes long after it had caught the last sight of the carriages.

It was understood that, for all the three days of the visit, the same costume would not be worn twice. The maids had the care-worn look of trainers engaged in the last touches on racing day. They peeped over the great staircase with an air of mingled triumph and solicitude as they

If the banquet was at first sacramental in its solemnity, it was all the fault of the Points. They were too manifestly on their good behavior, and their enforced homage to the sense of propriety seemed to freeze the genial current of their souls. They confined themselves, for the most part, to the generalities of sport; but one who happened to be nearest to the prince branched off into the question of Arctic travel, with no very conspicuous success. The Squares had an easier part to play. They had only to eat their dinner to feel perfectly at their ease. The Earl of Ogreby, flattered by a special attention of the chef to his yearnings for boiled mutton, softened into a joke which seemed to give a final touch of intensity to the prevailing gloom. The meal might have been a total failure but for the happy accident of a report, in stealthy circulation, which seemed to divide the honors of curiosity between Mr. Gooding and the prince. It was whispered that the young Californian was the agent in advance of a new colossal combination which was to make the roast beef of old England a mere side-dish to American pork and beans. He knew nothing of the cause of the attentions which were showered on him in consequence; but, being human, he could only be pleased by their effect. Strong men sought to catch his eye with glances of respect. Beautiful and high-born women unmistakably gave him permission to offer his homage at a later stage. The Bruce himself, for the moment, was in eclipse. Arthur's looks and his unfailing courtesy were other things that told in his favor. He was surrounded in the drawing-room, while the Bruce scattered incivilities in his path without so much as the correction of a fan.

The support of his own countrywomen set the seal on Mr. Gooding's success. A few gave it reluctantly, under the uneasy suspicion that he might, after all, be only something in literature or art. They were naturally more exclusive in this respect than the society whose manners they aped. His relationship to the duchess, his education, and his bearing would not haye sufficed; for, to say the truth, these fastidious persons were only watching for the opportunity of snubbing Augusta as a parvenue in her own home. She had not given

rumor of her brother's share in cosmic finance seemed to decide the matter in his favor.

"I am still not so sure that he is in New York society," said one of them to the Countess of Ogreby, "but I will go as far as this: if both of us were there now, I should send him a card for my next party."

The countess, a plain woman in more senses than one, seemed mystified. Because he 's rich ?"

66

On the contrary; yet-"

"And you 've no such thing as rank?”

66

In one way of looking at it; but—" The old lady listened in a state of stupefaction. Her only clear impression was a confirmation of her dislike of the subtleties of the Athanasian creed.

The entertainment put a stop to further conversation. It was of the usual kind: stars of opera at a guinea a note; a short drawing-room comedy in one act by distinguished amateurs, most superbly costumed; a fencing-bout by a French and an English performer of the first distinction. A zenana dance by a young lady, wherewith the Points had hoped to secure a little of the fun of the fair, had been ruled out by the blue pencil. The discomfited party yawned through the program until the withdrawal of the royal pair enabled them to seek their consolation in the smoking-room. Hard fate, however, attended them even here. The Squares invaded this scene of repose with the royal duke at their head. For a time the talk, in deference to his tastes, turned almost exclusively on the prospects of to-morrow's sport. But Providence was still watchful over the dispirited faction, and at the third cigarette he took his leave, with most of the Squares in his train. It is the unwritten law of such gatherings everywhere: the Points usually sit out the others, but, until this comes to pass, the conversation is kept within the safest limits. At a later period it takes, if not a wider, a more personal, range; and with the small hours it is apt to descend to scandals, with those who

feel themselves sure of one another both in taste and in respect for the professional secret. When successive reductions have brought about a final survival of the unfittest, you may hear anything you are willing to listen to. As the hours wore on, that glittering Point, Tom Penniquicke, was telling how the true heir to the greatest peerage in England now languished as a publican on one of his late father's town

T nine o'clock that morning Rosella arrived in her little office on the third floor of the great publishing-house of Conant & Company, and putting up her veil without removing her hat, addressed herself to her day's work. She went through her meager and unimportant mail, wrote a few replies, and then turned to the pile of volunteer manuscripts which it was her duty to read and report upon.

For Rosella was Conant's "reader," and so well was she acquainted with the needs of the house, so thorough was she in her work, and so great was the reliance upon her judgment, that she was the only one employed. Manuscripts that she "passed up" went direct to Conant himself, while the great army of the "declined" had no second chance. For the "unavailables" her word was final.

From the first-which was when her initial literary venture, a little book of short tales of Sicily and the Sicilians, was published by the house-her relations with the Conants had been intimate. Conant believed in her, and for the sake of the time when her books could be considered safe investments was willing to lose a few dol

lars during the time of her apprenticeship. For the tales had enjoyed only a fleeting succès d'estime. Her style was, like her temperament, delicately constructed and of extreme refinement, not the style to appeal to the masses. It was "searched," a little précieuse, and the tales themselves were diaphanous enough, polished little contes, the points subtle, the action turning upon minute psychological distinctions.

Yet she had worked desperately hard upon their composition. She was of those very few who sincerely cannot write unless the mood be propitious; and her state of mind, the condition of her emotions, was very apt to influence her work for good or ill, as the case might be.

But a succès d'estime fills no purses, and favorable reviews in the literary periodicals are not "negotiable paper." Rosella could not yet live wholly by her pen, and, while awaiting the time of her arrival, thought herself fortunate when the house offered her the position of reader.

This arrival of hers was no doubt to be hastened, if not actually assured, by the publication of her first novel, "Patroclus," upon which she was at this time at work. The evening before, she had read the draft of the story to Trevor, and even now, as she cut the string of the first manuscript of the pile, she was thinking over what Tre