looked up, and caught Amelie's eye. She flushed slightly, and looked away again. Some rather heavy rejoinder on the part of Reggie Armstrong followed, and Gallio sat down opposite Bertie and Sybil.
' Charming woman,' he said in his very low, gentle voice; ' she has all the brightness of the Western civilization.'
Bertie could not help smiling, and, looking up again, caught Amelie's glance, and felt guilty. The resounding voice went on:
' It's just my idea of the English country house,' she said; ' it's just ancestral. Why, Lewis might go and establish his office right here under these trees, and give Vanderbilt fits, as he did last year, and the trees wouldn't care. That's what I've just lain awake and coveted till three in the morning. Why, I was at Windsor last week, and I assure you Windsor looks like a mushroom beside this. It's just English. Lord Bolton, however you could let Lewis have it I can't think. Come and sit by me, and pay me some more compliments. Why, it tickles me to death to sit here and talk to you. I think you're just lovely.'
Gallio rose obediently.
' Tact, too,' he observed to Mrs. Massington, as he turned to comply with Mrs. Palmer's frank and direct request.
In fact, for the time things could not have been worse, and Mrs. Palmer's voluble shrillness, bawling all sorts of things which were neither wicked nor stupid nor anything objectionable, except that they were simply impossible, at Gallio, who sat beside her, and encouraged her by his exquisite courtliness of manner into imagining that she was being the most brilliant success, was too much for the nerves of some of the English section, who strolled away about the lawn with fine deliberation, and carefully abstained from any comment. But in process of time Amelie took her mother away to see her room, and Gallio, suave to the last, made her his best bow, as she declared for the twentieth
