Then came Consul Green, brimming over with naive delight in his return to Chesner ton for a holiday. His old mother still lived in the red brck house facing the Vicarage, with the chocolate-colored Fpire of the church rising to the left, of it, and, of coarse, ha was bound to see a good deal of the Brodericks. He remembered Isabel as a coy little lass in very short frocks. She was not now at all coy, nor did she wear short frocks.
The pocr little man was muds to be victimised. He had not tor ten years en joyed the intimate society of cultured European ladies. The F.O. had seemed to take positive pleasure in banishing him to the most forlorn stations in the service. Mrs Broderick saw at once how he was struck by her eldest daughter. The im pression made upon him was not unlike that of an Academy chef fi'iturre. He. would not have dreamed of trying to secure the ehej d'teuvre just because it " knocked him all of a heap." Neither did he imagine it possible, at first, that this beautiful young woman could bs aught more to him than a most bewitching picture of a young English maiden.
