Then, having led him successfully through the _role_ of the comic Englishman abroad, she repaid him with information.

She told him, not without some secret amusement at the reprobation it excited, the tragic story of Mrs.
Verrier.

She gave him a full history of her brother's honourable and brilliant career; and here let it be said that the _precieuse_ in her gave way to the sister, and that she talked with feeling.

And finally she asked him with a smile whether he admired Miss Floyd.

The General, who had in fact been observing Miss Floyd and his nephew with some little uneasiness during the preceding half-hour, replied guardedly that Miss Floyd was pretty and picturesque, and apparently a great talker.
Was she a native of Washington?
"You never heard of Miss Floyd ?--of Daphne Floyd?
No?
Ah, well!"-- and she laughed--"I suppose I ought to take it as a compliment, of a kind.
There are so many rich people now in this queer country of ours that even Daphne Floyds don't matter." "Is Miss Floyd so tremendously rich ?" General Hobson turned a quickened countenance upon her, expressing no more than the interest felt by the ordinary man in all societies--more strongly, perhaps, at the present day than ever before--in the mere fact of money.