snatches off the diadem in her whirring swoop. But fronts discrowned
take a new majesty to generous natures: in all sleek prosperity there is
something commonplace; in all grand adversity, something royal.

The boat shot to the shore; the young people landed, and entered the arch
of the desolate palace. They gazed on the great hall and the presence-
chamber, and the long suite of rooms with faded portraits; Vance as an
artist, Lionel as an enthusiastic, well-read boy, Sophy as a wondering,
bewildered, ignorant child. And then they emerged into the noble garden,
with its regal trees. Groups were there of well dressed persons. Vance
heard himself called by name. He had forgotten the London world,--
forgotten, amidst his midsummer ramblings, that the London season was
still ablaze; and there, stragglers from the great focus, fine people,
with languid tones and artificial jaded smiles, caught him in his
wanderer's dress, and walking side by side with the infant wonder of Mr.
Rugge's show, exquisitely neat indeed, but still in a coloured print, of
a pattern familiar to his observant eye in the windows of many a shop
lavish of tickets, and inviting you to come in by the assurance that it
is "selling off." The artist stopped, coloured, bowed, answered the
listless questions put to him with shy haste: he then attempted to
escape; they would not let him.

"You MUST come back and dine with us at the Star and Garter," said Lady
Selina Vipont. "A pleasant party,--you know most of them,--the Dudley
Slowes, dear old Lady Frost, those pretty Ladies Prymme, Janet and
Wilhelmina."

"We can't let you off," said, sleepily, Mr. Crampe, a fashionable wit,
who rarely made more than one bon mot in the twenty-four hours, and spent
the rest of his time in a torpid state.