“You know them, don't you?”
“I met them yesterday at dinner, and shall be delighted to introduce your Lordship. Indeed, they asked me if you were not the Lord that was so intimate with the Prince of Wales.”
“How stupid! They might have known, even without the aid of a Peerage, that I was a schoolboy when the Prince was a grown man. The tall girl is good-looking; what's her name?”
“She's the daughter of the Honorable Leonidas Shinbone, that's all I know,—rather a belle at Saratoga, I fancy.”
“Very dreadful!” sighed Lady Grace, fanning herself; “they do make such a mess of what might be very pretty toilette. You could n't tell her, perhaps, that her front hair is dressed for the back of the head.”
“No, sir; I never play at cards,” said Lord Lackington, stiffly, as an American gentleman offered him a pack to draw from.
“Only a little bluff or a small party of poker,” said the stranger, “for quarter dollars, or milder, if you like it.”
A cold bow of refusal was the reply.
“I told you he was the Lord,” said a friend, in a drawling accent “He looks as if he 'd 'mow us all down like grass.'”
Dr. Lanfranchi, the director of the establishment, here interposed, and, by a few words, induced the Americans to retire and leave the others unmolested.