"Oh, yes, I am sure I shall. You are quite in the right in what you say of them," Mr. Heathcote eagerly replied.
And Sir Robert, who had purposely laid this trap for him, thought to himself, "The boy is certainly in love. I must find out all about it, unless he has the grace to tell me himself."
Much as she liked Niagara, Miss Noel was not sorry, after long delay, to get a letter from Sir Robert, asking her to join him in Chicago, and telling her of a delightful visit he had made to Richmond, where he had been received "with particular kindness" and had met a great number of agreeable people, most of them Virginians of the modern type and scarcely so interesting, in a way, as the Aglonby family, who, as he saw from other individuals, were survivals of a generation rapidly disappearing, to be found only occasionally here and there now,--"a class of aristocrats long a curious anomaly in a republican state, hardly to be matched in Europe to-day outside of Austria, and never to be reproduced."
It did not take Parsons long to do the necessary packing; but Miss Noel consumed a whole day in putting up her carefully-labelled "specimens of the flora of New York;" and Ethel had to settle with Mr. Bates, who would doubtless rather have been rejected by an English-woman than accepted by any American, and was not denied that luxury.
From Chicago the reunited forces went off almost immediately to Salt Lake City, having only three days to give to a little hurried sight-seeing in the "marvellous Sphinx city," as they called it in their letters home.
At Salt Lake Mrs. Sykes was awaiting their arrival, and betrayed a radiant satisfaction at the first glance.
"You can't think how busy I have been and what a lot I have accomplished," she related exultantly. "I have found a whole village of Thompsons with a _p_, and went and boarded there, and have got up a book that Bentley will give me a hundred pounds for. And I have done a lot of sketches to illustrate it, and, so far from being out of pocket, shall have made by my American tour. It has been the greatest fun imaginable, poking about in their houses and dishing them up afterward. And, only fency, I've got a lock of Brigham Young's hair, _well authenticated_. I palmed myself off on a person that I met as being a very great admirer of his, and she gave me it. When I get home I'm going to have a ring made of it, like the one Lady Bottsford has got made of King John of Abyssinia's wool, which has been so talked of. People have taken to noticing my rings very much ever since I had that tooth of darling Bobo's polished and mounted in brilliants; and this will be unique,--there will not be another like it in all England. I told the person of whom I got it what I meant to do with it, and she said that I must revere him deeply; and, do you know, I quite forgot my part that I was playing, and said that I didn't care a fig for the old sinner, but that it was a great curiosity. And she was so engry, quite fiawrious, and wanted it back; but of course she didn't get it. When do we leave this?"