“HOW KIND YOU ARE”“HOW KIND YOU ARE”
she had never known, and the revelation silenced her. She had sometimes reproached herself that the studious calm, the entire absorption of her life in her work had been exaggerated, and as she looked at the slight figure in its black gown, at the pale face with its sombred, youthful beauty, the conviction was borne in upon her, by this little breath from the outside world, by the life of this girl as told by her, that the insularity of her existence had been a mistake. A sudden intense dissatisfaction and impatience with her life took hold upon her.
The girl rose to go. She stood there hesitating, embarrassed, as if she wished to ask something, and rather dreaded doing so.
“I—I shall have a great deal of time this winter,” she hazarded, twisting the ring of her fan slowly round and round her finger, “and I am going to study—indeed I am!” She glanced up quickly, as if afraid Professor Arbuthnot might be smiling. “I know you think it foolish for me to try, but you don’t know how you’ve inspired me this afternoon!” She went on enthusiastically. “You and everything here make me realize intensely how little I know, and I am going to begin and really learn something. You don’t know how much obliged I’d be ifyou would tell me a little how to begin—what to start on—something easy, adapted for weak intellects!”
She looked up smiling and with heightened color at Professor Arbuthnot. She still stood in so much awe of her and was so afraid of being laughed at!
But that lady was not laughing at all. She looked preternaturally grave.
“It seems to me,” she said slowly, “that you and the natural sciences can get along admirably without each other. Why, child, you have lived!” she cried with sudden vehemence. She went over and shook her gently by the shoulder. “You are twenty-four and I am fifty! In four years you have crowded into your life more than I shall ever learn!”
The girl looked at her wonderingly, puzzled.
“Have you forgotten so soon what we heard this afternoon—that ‘life is everything, that all that you can learn in a hundred times the four years of your college course is but the least part of what life and nature can teach you?’”She pushed the girl toward the door.
“When you are tired of living come back to me.”
She stood and watched the girl, with the mystified, half-hurt look on her face, disappeardown the corridor. When she had quite gone she went in and stood at the window for a long, long while looking out at the deepening shadows, and then she seated herself grimly at her desk and wrote to her publishers that they would have to delay the appearance of her book, as she felt she needed a vacation and would have to give up work on it for awhile.
SHE was so noticeably pretty and stylish, with that thorough-bred air of the young girl to whom life has always been something more or less of a social event, that she attracted a great deal of attention, though, of course, she very properly appeared to be oblivious of that fact. Even the baggage-master, when she caught his eye, hastened toward her and bestirred himself generally in a way that is not characteristic of baggage-men on the Boston and Albany, or any other road. She noticed vaguely that he seemed rather surprised when she gave him her four trunk-checks and he assured her with elaborate politeness that the train would stop at a certain small station without fail, to let off several hundred young women who wished to go directly to “the College.”
When Miss Eva Hungerford, on the completion of an enthusiastic college career, wrote to her young Philadelphia cousin, Margaret Wright, that she ought to take a college course, it was quite in despair of really inducing that younglady to do so, and only in the vain hope of saving her from an early and ill-considered marriage with an extremely nice Harvard youth, who declared that he would cheerfully forego his senior year if her parents would give their consent.
It was therefore with both delight and surprise that, just before starting for Europe, Miss Hungerford received a rather gloomy letter from her young cousin, who said that with such a brilliant example before her, and deeply impressed by the weighty arguments in her cousin’s letter, she had told the Harvard man that she was much too young and ignorant to marry, and fully convinced that society was a hollow sham, she had determined to devote the next four years to those pursuits which had raised her cousin so far above the ordinary girl. She was even greatly interested, she said, in her preparations for the entrance examinations which she would take at Philadelphia, and the chances of her being admitted. Miss Hungerford was quite touched by the little tribute to herself contained in the letter, and wrote a most cordial answer, and rather upbraided herself for having thought so lightly of her cousin. But her mother seemed to be distressingly sceptical about Margaret’s heroic determination, and saidshe shouldn’t wonder if some misunderstanding with the Harvard man were not at the bottom of it. But Miss Hungerford was confident that such a lofty purpose could have been born only of some noble sentiment, and refused to have her faith in her young cousin shaken by such a supposition.
When Miss Wright got off the train at the pretty little station, she found herself in the midst of a sufficiently large crowd of young women, all of whom seemed to be aggravatingly well acquainted with each other, and who set about in a most business-like way to get where they wanted to go, some taking “barges” and omnibuses, others striking out easily over the roads in the direction of the college. Being totally unfamiliar with the place and somewhat bewildered by the number of girls, Miss Wright thought she would simply take a carriage and get up to the college as quickly as possible.
She never told anyone but her best friend what were her sensations on reaching the big building and being “numbered” for an interview with one of the assistant professors, instead of seeing the president herself, as she had expected to do; or how hurt she felt at being totally ignored by the vast majority of busy, rather severe-looking young women, or howgrateful she felt to a patronizing Sophomore who talked to her kindly, if condescendingly, for a few moments and who took her through unending corridors to her rooms. Later in the day she found two or three girls who wore tailor-made travelling gowns and seemed ill at ease, and they all huddled together in a corner of one of the big corridors and talked rather helplessly to each other. They would have liked to know what the peals on the big Japanese bell meant, and if they were expected to do anything about it, but they were afraid to ask anyone, because they were not sure which were the professors and which the students.
When it came her turn to see the assistant, she felt quite ready to go home. She had made out a list of studies which she thought she would like, but when she showed it to the professor, that astute lady very kindly but firmly told her that it was ill-advised and made her out another. She had wanted to study mathematical astronomy, because a Harvard man had said a chum of his studied it and found it “immense,” and besides she thought the name would impress her friends; but the professor pointed out to her that she would have to take the entire course in mathematics before she could hope to do anything with the astronomy. It was the same way with several other things, and she found, when the interview was over, that her list consisted mostly of freshman studies. She was rather disheartened by this, but remembered that Miss Hungerford had been a full freshman, and so she determined to go to work conscientiously.
And she did work very hard, but there were a great many young women who seemed to have had a much more thorough previous education than herself, and though she was not in the least snobbish, she was secretly surprised and a little bit aggrieved by their evident disregard of her superior gowns. She might as well not even curl her hair, she thought gloomily—most of the best students wore theirs back in a rather uncompromising way, and she thought it might have some influence for the better on her mind, and half-way determined to do it. But when she saw how she looked with it straight and pulled quite back, she gave it up for fear the Harvard man (who though so near, maintained a stony silence and invisibility) should happen to come over to the college to see some other girl.
When the winter concerts began and the young women were inviting their friends out from the “Tech” and Harvard and Amherst, and other places which to any but the college mind would seem appallingly distant, she satresigned and alone, and wondered what her people would think if they could see her looking so sad and deserted. Her friends, she knew, would feel sorry for her, and would at last believe in her determination to go through the course.
When she had been at college about four months and was beginning to realize how little she knew, and how infinitely far off the president still seemed, and the effect of the study of chemistry on a brain unprepared for it, and was pitying herself for looking so pale and thin under her anxieties—one of the favorite concerts of the year was given. A celebrated violinist and his wife, a charming singer, were coming out. It was the last concert before the Christmas holidays, and one of the tailor-made girls with whom she had become intimate since that miserable first day had invited a lot of men out and had asked her to help entertain them. As every one knows, it is a long-established custom in that college for those young women who are so fortunate as to have a large masculine acquaintance to ask their friends to help them “take care” of the surplus male element.
Miss Wright was feeling very blue that evening and had just about made up her mind to stay at the college through the Christmas vacation, that she might spare her parents the distress of seeing her so worn and changed; so that when the tailor-made girl came to ask her to see after some of her friends for her, she thought that probably she was entitled to some recreation for the good resolution she had made. But she was now much too indifferent to men and such things to bestir herself very greatly, so she only put on her next most becoming gown and descended languidly to find the people.
Her friend saw her first and made a little dive at her through the circle of youths around her, and bore her to them with quite an air of triumph. And then, while she was trying to hear the names and remember where they came from, she suddenly saw a Harvard man coming toward her, and looking very much surprised and intensely happy, and somewhat embarrassed. She had just time to wish she had put on the other gown, when the bell for the concert sounded and everybody began to rush down the corridor. Somehow they got left behind the others, and as the place was crowded and they did not seem to care much for the celebrated violinist, who really played exceptionally well that evening, they considerately took seats against the wall behind everybody, where they could talk to their hearts’ content.
And they really must have talked quite a gooddeal, for when the last bell sounded for all the visitors to go and the driver of the big college sleigh (which was really an omnibus on runners) was shouting himself hoarse in the “centre” and in nervous asides assuring the excited and aggrieved passengers already assembled and waiting that they would all be late for the last train that night if the remaining few did not hurry up—while all of this was going on, the Harvard man was still sitting with her on the pedestal of a plaster statue in a darkened corner of a corridor, assuring her that they could be married just as soon as the finals were over, and that though he was sure to be made a marshal he would not wait for Class Day for anything which he could then think of under the sun, and that instead of sending out invitations to a spread in Beck, he would give his friends a delightful shock by substituting his wedding cards for them, and while the other fellows were working like beavers at the Tree, or filling dance cards for their friends, or wearing themselves to shreds dancing with their friends’ friends, they could be in a boat half-way over to the other side. And she was saying she didn’t think she would come back after Christmas so as to have plenty of time to get her gowns and things ready, and that she did not think she was really andtruly fitted for college life; which he interrupted to assure her that he was certain she already knew vastly more than he did, and that he would telegraph her mother and father about the whole thing before he slept, and that if the answer was favorable he would send her some flowers the next day as a token. And then when the coachman’s patience had quite given out and they heard the sleigh go dashing away from under theporte-cochère, before she could realize it he had kissed her once quickly and jumped down the steps four at a time, and was out of the door tearing after the vanishing coach.
The next afternoon Miss Wright received an enormous box full of Mabel Morrison roses, and her tailor-made friend, not understanding the significance of the flowers, thought it was rather shabby on her part not to offer her some. About the same time of day the Harvard man sent a long and explicit telegram to the agent of the Cunard Line for the very best stateroom on a steamer sailing on or about the 20th of the next June, and blushed boyishly and then laughed a little at its “previousness,” as he signed the application for “Mr. and Mrs. Roger Pervere, New York,” six months before his wedding-day.
JUDGE CAHILL drew his chair a trifle nearer the fire and the tall, muscular young man who was with him, and who bore so striking a resemblance to him as to be unmistakably his son, dropped into one opposite. They had finished their late dinner and were on the way to the library, but the elder man had paused before the big chimney-piece, standing meditatively for a few moments, and had finally seated himself comfortably and evidently with no immediate intention of proceeding to the library beyond.
“The whole arrangement is just what I have planned and hoped for all my life,” he said at length, with a bright look at the young man opposite. “And we have a capital chance of talking it over together to-night. It is rather lucky that your aunt is away for a few days, Dana. Your sister will be delighted. You must write to her at once that it isun fait accompliand that she must leave college for over Sunday and come in and celebrate with us!”
“Oh! it will doubtless seem a mere trifle to Louise in comparison with her own arduous duties and tasks,” responded young Cahill, laughing a little and offering a cigar to his father, who refused it with a slight shake of his fine, white head.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll smoke one,” he said, lighting his own.
“Oh! I don’t mind at all,” said the elder man; and then absently and sadly, as he pushed the thick, silvery hair back from his forehead with a quick decisive motion habitual with him:
“I wish your mother could have lived to see this, Dana!”
The younger man made an inarticulate murmur of assent and regret, and then they both sat silent, staring into the crackling logs, while the butler moved noiselessly about, putting a decanter and glasses on the table and turning down the lamp a bit and folding back the screen. The younger man was making a rather unsuccessful attempt to recall his mother. He remembered her vaguely as a boy of eight remembers, and she had always seemed to him rather like some beautiful woman of whom he had read than his own mother; and the portrait of her in the drawing-room, although he could recall every feature, every line of it, was like the picture ofany other beautiful woman he might have seen in a gallery abroad or the year’s Academy. At last he looked up, and shaking the ash from his cigar, said, with rather an effort—
“You have been most kind, sir. I scarcely think I deserve so much at your hands. I shall try to be all you wish.”
Judge Cahill looked quickly around. “That’s right! that’s right, my boy!” he said heartily, and with a touch of surprise in his voice. “You have always been what I wished—not very studious, perhaps”—he laughed indulgently, “but you always stood fairly well at the University, and although you have doubtless done a great many things of which I know nothing and of which I do not wish to know,” he added quickly and decidedly, “still I believe you have lived a life which you have no need to be ashamed of. I know that you are honest, and truthful, and straight, and that I can trust you, and that the responsibilities which you are to assume will make you even more upright and ‘square,’ if possible.”
He glanced admiringly and affectionately at the athletic young figure sitting easily before him, at the well-shaped head and pleasant blue eyes and finely-cut mouth of the young man.
“You might have been so different,” went onthe older man, musingly, and with a certain whimsicality. “You might never have been willing to go through the University; or worse still, you might never have been able to get through; or you might have made debts that even I would not have felt willing or able to pay; or you might have been unwilling to supplement your college education with the years of travel which I thought necessary; or you might have had so decided a dislike for the law that it would have been impossible for me to take you in the firm as I am now so delighted, so proud to do; or you might have married too soon and ruined your life. In short, you might have been a disappointment—and you are not.”
The young man shifted his position a little, and tumbled the burnt end of his cigar into the ash-tray at his elbow.
“You are very kind, sir,” he repeated. “I am not quite equal to telling you just how kind you seem to me, and how proud I am to be the junior member of the firm. I feel a legal enthusiasm kindling within me which I am sure will land me on the Supreme Bench some day!” And then he went on more seriously, and with an anxious note in his voice. “But I hope you are not deceiving yourself about me, sir. If you remember, youdidhave to pay debts for me atthe University, and there was one time when I thought active measures would be taken to prevent my finishing my course even if I had been quite inclined to continue, as indeed I was; and I am not very clever, and shall never be at the head of my profession as you are, sir!”
Judge Cahill leaned back and laughed easily.
“I had quite forgotten those little incidents, Dana!” he said, “and do you know, it seems to me that we are unusually complimentary and effusive to each other to-night. I am congratulating myself on having such a son, and you on having me for your father! Well—it is not a bad idea. A little more demonstration in our family will not hurt anything.” He paused slightly, and then added: “Your mother was not very demonstrative.”
Again young Cahill murmured an assent as he looked reflectively into the fire. He could just remember that she had not seemed very fond of himself.
“But Louise is demonstrative enough,” he said, at length.
“Yes—yes, indeed,” replied his father, readily. “Louise is very affectionate and enthusiastic. She seems tremendously interested in her college—much more so than you were in yours,” he added with another laugh.
Dana Cahill got up leisurely, and stood by the chimney-piece thrusting his hands in his pockets and looking thoughtfully into the fire.
“I am thinking, sir,” he began, hesitatingly, “of what you have said about my having lived straight. I want to be fair about it. Ihavelived better than some. I have done nothing to be ashamed of, as you said, sir, and I cannot think of anything just now to speak of which would illustrate my point. But I cannot help thinking that your ideals and principles are so much higher and purer than those of most young men of to-day, that I may have fallen short of them in a great many ways of which you do not dream.” He moved back uneasily to his chair and dropped into it. “I do not mean in the more vital questions. I have done nothing dishonorable, nothing that I could not afford to do according to the world’s standard.”
The elder man looked at him, and a shade of annoyance and uneasiness crept into his face.
“Well?” he asked, finally.
Young Cahill looked up, and his frank, boyish face wore a rather perplexed, troubled expression.
“Well,” he said, “that’s all—unless—” he stopped suddenly and lit another cigar rather nervously.
“Unless what?” insisted the elder man, the uneasiness and annoyance betraying themselves in his voice.
“But,” he added, quickly; “don’t tell me anything that you might later regret telling, or anything very disagreeable if you can help it, for I confess you have been so satisfactory, so thoroughly all that I wanted my son to be, that I shrink from hearing anything to your detriment.”
“I don’t know that it is exactly to my detriment, for after all, I was thinking of a particular case to illustrate what I said a while ago, and I am pretty sure that most of the men I know wouldn’t think seriously of it for a moment; but I acknowledge that I have never felt satisfied with myself about it all.” He threw back his head and stared fixedly at the ceiling for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“By Jove, sir! we are getting demonstrative,” he said. “Do you feel yourself equal to being a father confessor besides just an ordinary father?”
Judge Cahill smiled in a perfunctory way.
“If your conscience is in such a bad way as to need confessing, Dana, I shall be very glad to hear, although I, of course, cannot give you absolution.”
Cahill paused a moment.
“That’s so, sir,” he said, finally. “After all it is hardly worth while troubling you about such a small thing, and one that happened so long ago, and which is settled now, rightly or wrongly, forever.”
He stood up as if to say good-night, but the elder man did not rise and sat looking thoughtfully at the blaze with the uneasy, surprised look still on his face.
“It is not about business? nothing that affects your character for honesty and fair dealing?” he said at length, interrogatively.
“Oh, no!” replied Cahill, quickly.
Judge Cahill looked inexpressively relieved. He poured out a little wine and drank it off quickly, as if he had experienced some moment of sharp emotion which had left him faint. The younger man noticed the action and went on hastily.
“It was nothing—only about a girl whom you never heard of, and myself—something that happens to two-thirds of the men one meets—it is really of little consequence, though it has worried me, and since I have spoken of it at all, I may as well tell you about it, sir.”
But it was a very fragmentary story that he told and the facts, as he reviewed them hastily,seemed absurdly commonplace and inadequate to the amount of worry he had given himself.
“It was five years ago, sir, you remember, just after I left college, and went out to Nevada for the summer with Lord Deveridge and the rest of that English syndicate. It was when they bought ‘The Bish’ mine, you know. Of course we went about a great deal. They were so afraid of being swindled, and there had been such pots of money lost out there by English syndicates, that they determined to investigate fully and take every precaution. So they went around trying to sift things out, and there were a great many complications of all sorts which occasioned a great deal of delay, and there were so many conflicting rumors about the value of the mine, that I began to think they were never going to wind up things. Deveridge and I got awfully tired of pottering around after all sorts of men, meeting an expert geologist here and a committee there, and never getting at anything; so we finally decided to cut the whole thing for two weeks and go off on a little shooting expedition. Two or three others joined us, and we had magnificent sport for four days—and then I sprained my bad ankle again.” He stopped suddenly. “It is very curious how things happen,” he said at length, with a little laugh. “Ifit hadn’t rained the morning of the Springfield game, the ground wouldn’t have been wet and I wouldn’t have slipped in that last scrimmage, and my ankle wouldn’t have been sprained, and I wouldn’t have wrenched it on that mountain road, and I wouldn’t have been laid up two weeks in the house with her, and none of this would have happened.”
But the elder man was in no mood for trifling.
“You were saying——?” he began, anxiously.
“That I hurt my ankle and had to limp to the nearest inhabited place and stay there until it got better. Of course the others went on. They were coming back that way and stopped for me. I was all broken up at not being able to enjoy the shooting, but my ankle gave me so much trouble at first that I didn’t have a great deal of time to think about it; and then it began to dawn on me that she—the daughter I mean—was unusually pretty and refined and quite different from her parents seemingly, and—and—there was nothing else to do, sir, and I am afraid that I acted as most young men would act under similar circumstances.”
“You mean,” said his father, with an uncompromising directness which Cahill thought rather brutal and unnecessary, “you mean that you made love to the girl?”
The young man nodded.
“She was very pretty, you know, and it was only for a short time, and she must have seen—have realized—that there was a difference, that there was nothing to it. It was only the most incipient flirtation—the same thing that goes on at Bar Harbor and the Pier and Newport among a different class of people.”
Judge Cahill said nothing, rather to the young man’s discomfiture, so he ran on, hurriedly:
“They were very poor, and I paid them liberally for what they did for me. I confess I rather lost my head about the girl for a week! She was strikingly pretty, but she had only the most elementary education and was absurdly unconventional. Of course it was nothing, sir, and I don’t flatter myself that she felt any worse when I left than I did—at least she never made any sign,” he added, meditatively.
“I can see how, from your point of view, it appeared nothing, Dana,” said the elder man, gravely, at length. “But I hope this is the only episode of the kind in your life,” he continued, after a moment’s pause.
The younger man stood up with a rather relieved look on his face.
“Indeed it is, sir! and I think the fact that I have let it worry me so much is proof that I ama novice at it. The whole thing was so unimportant that I feel rather ridiculous for having spoken of it. There was never anything serious in the affair, and of course, sir, I did not dream—I knew it would be impossible to bring her here. You—my sister——” he stopped and looked around him rather helplessly.
“Of course,” assented the elder man, readily. “I am glad you got yourself so cleanly out of such an entanglement. As you say, it was commonplace and unimportant. Have you ever heard anything of her since?”
“O, no! I saw her for two weeks and then we parted with mutual regret, and that was all, sir! Your too complimentary remarks recalled the whole episode to my mind, and made me feel rather hypocritical, for I confess that I consider that sort of thing extremely caddish. There’s no excuse for it.”
“There is not, indeed,” assented the elder man, rising. “And it has further surprised me, because you have always seemed rather indifferent to women, Dana—almost too much so. Well—I am glad you told me. Your life has been clean, indeed, if you have no worse things to tell of than a two weeks’ flirtation with a little Western girl!” He laughed again—a deep, hearty laugh, with a relieved ring in it.
“Good-night!” he said. “To-morrow you will please get to the office promptly as a junior member should! ‘Cahill, Crosby, and Cahill’ sounds very imposing, doesn’t it, Dana? much more so than merely ‘Cahill and Crosby.’ I’m delighted, my boy! And it is especially good to think that you are back with me. What with your college life and travels, and law study, I have hardly seen anything of you for ten years, and at my age one cannot spare ten years—it is too big a slice out of the little cake left! Good-night!”
“Good-night, sir!” responded the young man, heartily, as he held the door open for his father to pass into the library.
And then he reseated himself before the fire and smoked another cigar and recalled a great many details that had somehow slipped his memory when talking to his father, and he felt distinctly relieved and glad to get away from his own thoughts when he remembered an engagement which took him out immediately.
At Easter Miss Louise Cahill left college to spend the vacation at her home in Boston. It was possibly because she was small and blond and quite irrepressible that her most intimate friend, Edith Minot, of Baltimore, whom shebrought home with her, was tall and rather stately, with a dark, severe beauty quite in contrast to that of Miss Cahill. They were alike, however, in a great many ways, in their young enthusiasms and in their devotion to art—they worshipped Israels and Blommers and Herzog—and in their vast interest in electrical inventions and discoveries, and in their sympathy with whatever was weak or ill or oppressed, and in modern charities and college settlements. They had been great friends at college, where Miss Minot had taken her degree the year before, but they had seen little of each other since, Miss Cahill having returned to finish her college course and Miss Minot having been abroad until late in the fall, and having then been much taken up with the social life of Baltimore.
Miss Cahill was very much afraid that society had spoiled Miss Minot, and that she would be less interested in art for art’s sake, and in university extensions and college settlements and organized charitable work. She was therefore much delighted and very enthusiastic to find that her friend was not at all changed in the ten months of absence, but that in the midst of her travels and social pleasures she had contrived to devote a great deal of time to the things that had always interested her, and that she had studied the Guild Hall Loan Exhibit and the East End with equal enthusiasm, while in London, and was greatly interested in Nikola Tesla’s latest experiments and in college settlements. It was the college settlements that interested her most, however.
“But I think,” she explained earnestly that evening to her friend and young Cahill, after the Judge and his sister had gone into the library—“I think that although there are more interesting and dreadful things to be contended with at the Chicago Settlement, and although Rivington Street is on a much larger scale, still I think I like the Boston College Settlement the most. Perhaps it’s because I know it better, or because it is not quite in the slummiest slums, or because I’m so interested in my protégée there—at any rate, I like it best.”
Miss Cahill looked plaintively at her brother.
“Just think, Dana, when Edith was at college she used to spend her Christmas vacations in Tyler Street. Don’t you think she’s very brave and good? I’m sure I’m only too glad to give my money, and I’m greatly interested in it, and awfully pleased when the others go; but I don’t think I could possibly stay there myself! And I actually believe she came near refusing my invitation to come here, because she thought she ought to go to the settlement!”
Cahill laughed easily.
“That is hard on us, Miss Minot. Think of having to compete in attractions with the college settlement, and only just managing to come out ahead!” He was not thinking very much of what he was saying—he was looking at the sombre, beautiful eyes, with the lids slightly lowered over them, and the sensitively cut lips and air of thorough breeding of the girl before him; and he was saying to himself that he had been singularly unfortunate to have always been away in Japan, or at the law school, or in Paris, when Miss Minot had visited his sister.
A little touch of color crept into the clear pallor of the girl’s cheeks.
“How unkind of you and Louise!” she exclaimed, smiling. “You must know there could be no question of what wasnicestto me. I’m very sorry that I like dances and the opera and luncheons and all that so much, but it is so, and the people at the college settlement are very good to let me come in now and then, and try to help a little and ease my conscience a little for all its self-indulgence and worldly pleasures. So you must not think better of me than you should!”
“Don’t believe her, Dana!” interposed Miss Cahill, indignantly. “She does it all because she’s so awfullygood, and she never brags about it as I would do, I’m sure, and they all adore her down there, and the little boys beg for her flowers, and the little girls have to be kissed, and the teachers are always delighted to see her,” she ran on, breathlessly and triumphantly.
Miss Minot looked up. “I do love the little children and they interest me tremendously,” she said. She leaned forward eagerly, and appealed to Cahill. “Don’t you see,” she said, “how easy it is to become interested in that sort of thing? One doesn’t have to be particularly religiously inclined or even ordinarily good—it’s just the human nature of it which touches one so. You ought to see them,” she went on, still appealing to Cahill. “They are so interested and amused in their ‘clubs,’ which meet different afternoons in the week, and they are so anxious to get in even before the others leave! I have seen them climbing up in the windows to get a look at the good times the others were having, and waiting about at the door in the cold until that ‘club’ should have gone home and left the warm rooms and the playthings, and the cheerful, bright teachers to them. It rather puts our society functions to shame,where no one goes to a reception until the receiving hours are half over, or to the opera until next to the last act.”
“And you ought to see how fond they are of her,” insisted Miss Cahill, admiringly. “She lets them get on her prettiest gowns and muss her, and she is so patient! I keep at a distance, and tell them they are very good and I hope they are having a nice time.”
Cahill laughed.
“Philanthropy made easy, is what suits you, Louise!”
“But it isn’t philanthropy at all,” objected Miss Minot, “unless it’s philanthropy to us outsiders to be allowed to go and help and share a little of the pleasure and culture of our selfish lives. Really you ought to see the children,” she went on, eagerly. “I don’t believe Palmer Cox’s brownies or ‘pigs in clover’ are such favorites anywhere else, and you wouldn’t imagine how interesting the making of a pin-cushion cover could be; and I never thought ‘Daisy Bell,’ and ‘Sweet Marie,’ and ‘Mollie and the Baby and I,’ were really pretty tunes until I heard a little girls’ club singing them in excellent tune, and with an appreciation of the sentiments quite astonishing.”
Cahill nodded a trifle absently. He decidedthat he had never seen any girl’s face quite as lovely or that appealed to him so as this girl’s, and that she was very different from most of his sister’s college friends, who were such serious young women and who rather over-awed him, and with whom he was never entirely at his ease.
“And then the women in the evening! They like the singing best, I think. It is wonderful to watch them when she sings for them, and I think her voice never sounds so beautiful as then.”
Cahill looked up interrogatively.
“She?” he said.
“It’s her protégée, Dana,” interposed Miss Cahill. “Edith won’t tell you the straight of it, so I shall. Edith found her already at the settlement. She was awfully poor, but she had this glorious voice and she was trying to support herself, and earn enough to have her voice trained. And she would come over Sunday evenings—she lived near the settlement—and sing for the men and women. You ought to see how they appreciate it and how they listen to her quite quietly, as if astonished and charmed into silence. She is nearly as poor as they, and it is all she can do for them, she says—I forget what she did, type-writing or something—and shewas going to an awfully bad teacher and getting her voice ruined, and so Edith made friends with her in that way. She has now sent her to Alden and really supports her so she can devote herself entirely to her music.”
Miss Minot glanced quickly up in a little embarrassed way.
“Louise is terrible!” she said, laughing. “But you cannot imagine how wonderfully beautiful her voice is. It is one of those naturally perfect voices—she had always sung, but never suspected what an extraordinary gift she had until two or three years ago. It’s such a tremendous satisfaction to do something for a voice like that. One gets so tired spending on one’s self and cultivating one’s own little society voice, that can just be heard across the drawing-room if everyone keeps quite still! Alden says she will be ready for Marchesi in six months, and for the Grand Opera in a year.”
“And one of these days, when she is a great prima donna and has married a marquis, or a count at least, she will come back and patronize you and send you a box for the matinée!” remarked Cahill.
Miss Minot shook her head smilingly.
“You are very cynical and you don’t know her in the least. She is very beautiful andvery fine and most grateful—absurdly grateful.”
“And she adores Edith,” put in Miss Cahill. “She has been her only friend and confidant, and she worships her and treats her as if she were a goddess, and I believe she would have her hands chopped off or her eyes burned out, or be executed quite cheerfully, to show her devotion.”
Miss Minot looked openly amused. “I don’t know about all that, I’m sure!” she said, “but I don’t think she would patronize me. Besides it would not be strange if she were cynical and hard like yourself, Mr. Cahill,” she went on smiling over at him, “for she has had a great deal of trouble already.” The girl pushed her chair back a little, and her fine, earnest face grew grave and perplexed.
Miss Cahill gave a little gasp. “Iknewshe had a history, Edith! She looks like it. She is awfully pretty,” she went on, turning to her brother. “I have seen her several times at the settlement, but we are not friends yet—I doubt if she even knows my name. I would like to know her, though—there is something so sad about her eyes and mouth, and her voice makes one cry.”
“And Alden—you know Alden, Mr. Cahill?—well, he’s rather brutal, sometimes—thinks only of his art—and he told her one day that she was particularly fortunate to have had a great trouble in her life, and that it would do more for her voice than ten years of training. You ought to have seen how she looked at him! But menarebrutal; it was a man who made her suffer first. She only told me part of the story, I don’t quite understand, but I know it nearly broke her heart, young as she was, and that she will never get over it or be the same again. I am not sure,” went on the girl thoughtfully, “it was before she came to Boston, but I don’t know the details, and of course I could ask no questions. She met him quite a while ago, out West, I believe, where she lived, and she thought he loved her, he led her to believe so, and she loved him, I know. He must have been quite different from the men she had known. He had everything and she nothing. It was a sort of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid episode, only the king was not kingly at all, and when the time came for him to go, he left her quite calmly.”
Her face was flushed now and her eyes wide open and shining with the indignation she felt. It struck Cahill again that she was the handsomest girl he had ever seen, and he liked her so—aroused and animated—even better than coldlybeautiful. He was not listening very much to what she was saying, but he was watching her quietly and intently, the nobly poised head and low forehead with the hair growing so beautifully on it, and the rounded chin and firm, rather square jaw. As he looked at her the conviction was borne in upon him that she was a girl who would be capable of entire devotion or utter renunciation, and that she would be implacable if her confidence were once destroyed.
“It must be a fine thing for a man to do,” she went on, scornfully, “to make a girl love him and believe him nobler, and better, and stronger than he is, and then to undeceive her so cruelly! And a girl like this one, too! That was the worst of it. It is bad enough when the girl and the man have equal chances—when they know each other’s weapons and skill, and when they can retire gracefully and before it is too late, or when they are already so scarred up that one wound more makes no difference. But when the advantages are all on one side—when one is so much stronger than the other! It may be because I am so fond of this girl, or it may be because I am even yet unused to the world’s ways, and the four years spent in college and away from such things may have made me super-sensitive, but however it may be, it seems a despicable thing to me!” She stopped short, and the indignation and scorn in her voice rang out sharply.
Cahill moved uneasily and looked around him. He had been so absorbed in watching the girl’s face that he had hardly taken in what she had been saying, but in some vague way he felt jarred and restless.
“And then,” continued Miss Minot, “if only she did not take it as she does—if she were only angry, or indifferent, or revengeful even—but she loves him still and she would do anything for him. She would be capable to-morrow of sacrificing herself and her love if she thought it would make him happier. Such devotion is as rare as genius.”
Miss Cahill leaned far forward, tracing out the delicate inlaid pattern of the table with the point of her silver letter-opener.
“If I were engaged to a man,” she said, thoughtfully, “and were to discover that he had treated a girl so, I would give him up, no matter what it cost me.”
“And you, Miss Minot?” said Cahill, “what would you do?” He felt a sudden, sharp curiosity as to her answer, and a vague apprehension of what she would say. The girl lifted her head proudly.
“It would not be any effort for me to give such a man up,” she said, quietly.
Cahill stood up restlessly. This girl had touched upon something which he would have liked to forget. Of course it had been greatly different in his case, he assured himself, but he felt uneasy and sore. And then he smiled. There was something which struck him as pathetically amusing in the seriousness of these two girls. They were so young and untried and utterly unworldly, and they took such a tragic view of such a common-place affair, and were so ready to be sacrificed for their high ideals and principles.
“You are very severe,” he said at length, with a rather forced laugh. “If we are all to be judged like that it will go hard with us.” But he could attempt no excuse or explanation with the girl’s beautiful, indignant eyes upon him, and presently the talk drifted off in other channels.
It was about two weeks after this that Cahill began to realize just how deeply in love he was with Edith Minot. She had interested him from the first, and her very dissimilarity from most of the society girls he knew, the nobility and seriousness of her nature beneath a rather cold and conventional manner, and the young purity of her presence had struck him as being thefinest and most attractive things he had ever seen. He had been with her a great deal in the two weeks she had spent with his sister, and he had had a great many opportunities of finding out just how superior she was to most girls, how witty and clever she could be, and what native dignity and fine simplicity of character she possessed, and how sincere and truthful she was. They had gone together to teas and receptions, and small dances, and the numerous post-Easter weddings, and the fact that she was his sister’s guest made it very easy for him to see a great deal of her without any gossip or talk. But delightful as all that had been, he was glad now that she was going back in a few days to her own people, and that he could go down in a decently short time and tell her what he could not tell her in his father’s house and which he had found so hard to withhold. The uncertainty in which he was as to whether she cared for him or not made him restless and very properly despondent, although he sometimes fancied that she was less cold to him than to the others, and that if she talked with him about certain things of particular interest to her, it was because she valued his opinion and friendship. And he was much pleased and very flattered when she appealed to him about her different schemes, and was evenready to sacrifice their last day to the college settlement.
“I really must go to Tyler Street to-day,” Miss Minot had said. “It’s my last chance. I have been very selfish, and have been having entirely too good a time. Why, I haven’t even seen my boys or heard the Prima Donna Contessa!” She turned and smiled at Cahill as she spoke. “By the way,” she continued, “why don’t you and Louise come with me and hear her sing? I have sent her a note telling her to meet me at the settlement at four o’clock, and I know she will be only too pleased to sing for us. It is quite wonderful, you know.”
“Of course we will go,” assented Miss Cahill briskly, while her brother aquiesced cheerfully, if less enthusiastically. It occurred to him that it would be as well for him not to be alone with Miss Minot any more, if he intended to hold to his resolution of not speaking just yet.
It was rather late when they started for the settlement, and by the time they had walked down Tyler Street from Kneeland—they left the carriage at the corner of Kneeland—they found that it was quite four and time for a club, the members of which were enthusiastically crowding around the door waiting for permission to enter, and playing leap-frog and tag and imperillinglife and limb by walking on the spiked iron fence in their frantic attempts to see in the windows. But when they caught sight of Miss Minot they stopped playing and jumped down from the fence and threw away their shinny sticks, and began to all talk at once at her, and to tell her what they had been doing during the winter, and that they hadn’t been absent from school but twice or ten times, or not at all, as the case happened to be, and they all seemed to have had a surprising number of deadly diseases, of which fact they were inordinately proud; and there were several still on the waiting list, who wanted her to intercede for them to have their names put in the club books, so they could go in and have a good time with the others; to all of which, and a great deal more, she listened sympathetically and interestedly. And as she stood so, the eager, softened expression on her face, laughing and talking with the children crowding around her, the boys grabbing at her hands and the little girls touching shyly the gown she wore, it seemed to Cahill that he had never seen her quite so lovely and lovable. He felt an amused sort of jealousy as he saw her run lightly up the steps with her slim hands held tightly by two very dirty and very affectionate little boys, with the rest swarming afterher and hemming her in; and when the front door was finally opened and she and his sister disappeared with them into the rooms beyond, he felt rather aggrieved and out of it.
He found himself in a narrow little hall and was just wondering what he should do with his hat and stick, when she came out from the inner room, closing the door behind her. She was laughing in a breathless, pleased way, and her face had a little flush on it as she turned to him.
“Please take off my coat,” she gasped, leaning against the balustrade of the steep little stairs. “I’m going to amuse them until the Prima Donna comes—she isn’t here, at least I don’t see her anywhere. Louise is playing for them now.” Cahill could just catch the sounds of a piano above the shrill laughter of the children. They were quite alone in the little hallway, and as he bent down to take off her coat, a sudden, wild impulse overcame him. He forgot everything except that he loved her and must tell her so, and he held her tightly while he spoke rapidly and earnestly. It suddenly seemed preposterous to him that he could have dreamed of waiting another week to find out whether she loved him or not; she must tell him then and there, he said, quick, before anyone came. And although she did not, in fact,tell him anything at all, he was so content with her eyes as she turned toward him that, bending down, he gave her one quick kiss after another.
And then the sound of the piano ceased and they heard a scramble of running feet at the door, which was thrown open by Miss Cahill.
“Where are you? come in!” she cried.
As Cahill and Miss Minot went into the room beyond, a girl came slowly down the stairs which they had just left. Her face was pitifully white and drawn, and there was a scared, surprised look in her eyes which was not good to see. When she reached the lowest step she stopped thoughtfully, leaning heavily against the stairs’ rail.
“I saw them,” she said, softly and tremulously to herself. “I saw them, and there is no possibility of a mistake. I don’t understand anything about it—how it has happened—but it washe—it washe! If she loves him—and she does love him—I saw it in her face, there is but one thing for me to do—there is no other way now.” She put both hands on the banister and swayed slightly toward it in her effort to control herself. “She has been everything to me, has done everything for me. And if I love him—and Idolove him!—there is a milliontimes more necessity for me to do it.” Her lips worked painfully and silently for a moment.
An instant later she had crossed the narrow passageway, and throwing open the door, stood there smiling faintly, with the hurt, frightened look still on her pale face. Miss Minot was the first to see her. She moved toward her, swiftly catching both the girl’s hands in her own, and dragging her forward to where Cahill and his sister were standing.
“The Prima Donna Contessa!” she said, gayly. “May I introduce Miss Cahill, Mr. Cahill——” but she stopped suddenly, for she saw Cahill take a step forward while a dull red suffused his face.
“You!” he said—“you!” His voice sounded an octave higher than usual and there was a queer, excited ring to it.
The girl drew back in a puzzled, half-offended way. But Cahill left his sister’s side and crossed quickly to where the girl was standing.
“Great heavens!—you!—aren’t you—?” he began, but the girl interrupted him quickly.
“Excuse me,” she said, in a politely distant tone.
“Don’t pretend—” he began again with a curious insistance in his voice; and then he stopped, putting his hand heavily on the back of a chairnear him and looking at Miss Minot and the girl standing beside her. An agony of apprehension took hold upon him.
The girl made a little gesture of surprise and turned proudly and indifferently to Miss Minot.
“I don’t think I understand,” she said quietly to her.
The nonplussed, vacant look on her face made Cahill hesitate. He looked fixedly at her. The red had left his face now and it showed a strange pallor. He was just conscious of the cold, astonished look on Miss Minot’s face, and that his sister was staring blankly at him. He pulled himself together sharply.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, with slow difficulty. “I have made a stupid mistake—I thought—” he stopped and drew a sharp breath.
The girl’s eyes met his steadily for a moment, and then she smiled again slightly.
“Oh, certainly,” she said, easily. “I have reminded so many people of so many other people that I am getting quite used to it! Resemblances are so often deceiving.”
Cahill looked at her in a curiously relieved way.
“And here we are, standing talking,” she ran on, “while the children are waiting to sing!They have learned some very pretty Easter hymns. You shall hear them.”
She spoke rapidly and directly to Cahill as though she wished to prevent him from talking, and her voice sounded strained and monotonous. She went over to the piano quickly and seated herself, and presently, when the children had got through their songs, she began to sing alone, and that evening both Miss Minot and Miss Cahill agreed enthusiastically that she had never sung like that before, and that if the director of the Grand Opera had heard her he would have signed a contract with her on the spot.
Miss Minot was rather disappointed that Cahill did not seem more impressed.
“I don’t believe you enjoyed it half as much as I thought you would,” she said, reproachfully to him. It was late, and they were just leaving the drawing-room, but he had held her back for an instant while the others passed on into the big hall.
“And isn’t she lovely and a great artist?” she insisted.
Cahill looked down at the severely beautiful face beside him, and for an instant the feeling of dread and apprehension which had swept over him that afternoon returned with redoubled force. He felt again the sudden, awfulshock the sight of that girl’s face had been to him, the intense relief on discovering his mistake. He realized acutely and for the first time just how impossible it would ever be to tell her of that episode in his life which the girl’s face had recalled, and which he had once felt impelled to tell his father, and he determined to make up to her in every way that a man can, for his silence. The possibility which had faced him for a moment, of losing her, had made her inexpressibly dear to him, and in that instant he had realized passionately all that the loss of her would mean to him. He had felt unutterably glad that the danger had been averted and that she need never know. He did not mean to deceive her, but as he held her hand and looked at her, he had but one thought, one fierce desire—to keep that look of trust and happiness forever on her earnest and beautiful face. He leaned forward slightly.
“How can I tell anything about any other woman whenyouare there?” he said, argumentatively, smiling at her. “You didn’t expect me to take much interest in thetimbreof her voice or her trill when you had just told me——”
“Oh, yes—I know—I never told you anything,” objected the girl, laughing and drawing away her hands. “And you were so dramatic—so curious when you met her, that if I had—known you longer, I think absolutely I would have demanded an explanation. Isn’t that what they say in books—‘demand an explanation?’”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what they say in books. No book ever told me anything aboutthis!”
The girl turned her shining, happy eyes upon him.
“How unutterably silly of me,” she said, breathlessly. “For a moment you said she was so like someone, and she had told me her story, I hardly know what I thought—imagined.” She spoke in little, broken pauses, and as she finished she laid her hand timidly on Cahill’s arm. “You said she reminded you of——”
The young man laughed happily. “The mere idea!” he said, touching her hands softly, and then he added lightly, as they moved toward the door: “What she reminded me of was an episode in my life that happened long ago and which was very uninteresting and unimportant.”
MISS EVA HUNGERFORD was having amauvais quart-d’heure, or to speak more exactly,une mauvaise demi-heure. She was lying in a long chair near her dressing-table, the pale-green satin cushions tucked closely around her, and her hands held tightly over her eyes to keep out any ray of sunlight that might enter the spectrally darkened room.
She was thinking hard. Once, when she partially emerged from her abstraction, she decided with reproach that she could not remember to have thought so hard for so long a time since leaving college, though in the meanwhile she had written a tragedy and a small volume of sonnets. The occasion called for thought. In half an hour he was to be there, and she had understood from his manner the evening before that she must have an answer ready for him.
It was all very tiresome. She had warded him off so far, but that could not go on forever. She had felt a little frightened; he had looked at her in a way she had never imagined he couldlook, and she had been devoutly thankful that just then her “most intimate friend” (even authors have “intimate friends”) had come in with her brother to make arrangements about a coaching party for the following Saturday. But she could not hope for a much longer reprieve. There was a note in his voice that she could not mistake, as he asked her when he could see her alone. She wondered now why she had told him at half-past four the next day. Why had she not said next week, or after she got back from Mexico, or any other time more remote than the present?
“Yes,” she acknowledged to herself, “I was afraid: and not of him but of myself. That is the humiliation of it. What was it I read in Ruskin? That it all ends with Tom, Dick, or Harry? I don’t believe it. At any rate, I shall not give up my career for any man.”
Miss Hungerford always spoke of her “career” to her friends with a sad sort of expression, as if it cut her off from them in some unexplainable way, and made her not of this world. Unconsciously she enjoyed the mingled admiration and awe of the less ambitiously intellectual of her “set” when they heard that she was really going to college. When she came home at vacations they gave her afternoon receptionsand luncheons, because, though of course they never breathed it to her, they had met with a flat failure when they tried to get their brothers and masculine friends to come for dinner-dances and “small and earlies.”
“Why, she’s awfully pretty!” they would exclaim when the men pleaded engagements.
“She’s terribly clever, isn’t she?” they would ask, warily. “Why, of course, Eva Hungerford is just too bright for anything, but she never makes one feel it. She doesn’t take a mean delight in showing off one’s ignorance. She talks just like we do,” they would declare, and the brothers would smile peculiarly and vanish.
But even her warmest friends admitted that she was carrying things too far when, at the end of her college career she announced her intention of taking a course in old English at Oxford, and then of going to France to study the literature.
“No, I am not going over in the Winthrop’s yacht, nor am I going coaching with them through Ireland,” she would explain. “I do not mean to travel much. I intend to study seriously. Of course, I shall take my summers off and enjoy myself, but I have a serious end in view, which I must not lose sight of.”
Miss Hungerford had a rather classic face, andlooked like a true Spartan when she would say that. Her friends would be either dumb with admiration at such explanations or, sometimes, the more venturesome would try to lure her from her purpose. But she only looked with pity on such attempts.
She was away two years, and although she had tried to keep up with her friends, on returning she found a great many of them married and more or less occupied with affairs which had no part in her life. This saddened her very much and made her more than ever determined to pursue her “career.” She had very few difficulties to contend with. There had been one slight interruption. While in Paris the young Comte de la Tour, whom she had first met at the American minister’s, had taken up a great deal of her time. When he proposed, she had refused him so calmly that she felt justified in admiring herself. She was rather mortified, however, on thinking it over, to find that for a whole month afterward she had not been able to fix her mind on anything serious, and had accepted a great many invitations out. This taught her a lesson. She had discovered that “to be serious, to do her best work, men must not divert her thoughts.” She wrote that down in her commonplace book, so that it would be a perpetual warning to her.
When she got home, her mother and father were delighted to find her no more changed. They had feared the worst from her letters. Her mother, hearing that old English script was very hard on the eyesight, had, after a good cry, resigned herself to glasses. She was intensely relieved to find that there was no occasion for her resignation, and in her happiness to find that Beowulf had not injured her daughter’s vision, herself helped to select a teak desk and bookcases for a “private study” for her. She even sanctioned an edition in pomona green and gold, of the French tragedy and sonnets. These books were not as much reviewed as Miss Hungerford had thought they would be, but her friends admired them intensely and generally came to her with them, that she might write her name on the title-page.
But scarcely had the room been arranged for hard work (Miss Hungerford had determined to spend the next few months in writing a curtain-raiser for Daly’s), when another and more serious interruption occurred.
She never knew just how it happened. Certainly she had never encouraged him, though she had sometimes suspected her mother of doing so, and assuredly Paul Stanhope in no way corresponded to her ideal hero. A few yearsago she would not have admitted that she had a masculine ideal, but now, as she put another cushion under her shoulder, she was forced to admit to herself that she might have one. Stanhope was big and strong and handsome. So far he answered to her ideal. But was he intellectual? He drove a four-in-hand splendidly, but that was hardly an intellectual employment. Was he literary? She remembered that in speaking once of Matthew Arnold’s “Monody on the Death of Arthur Hugh Clough,” she had noticed a distinctly blank expression on his face, and that he had tried to turn the conversation. But Miss Hungerford had been too quick for him and had herself changed the subject. That was one of her best points, as she acknowledged to herself. She could adapt herself to the people she happened to be talking to. But could she do so for a lifetime? Miss Hungerford shuddered and pressed her hands more tightly over her eyes, as if to keep out the vision of a husband who did not appreciate allusions to the “Cumnor cowslips.”
Then in some way the phrase “Art is long” got into her head. She knew it, and was not afraid. She had said it to herself a thousand times to keep up her courage. She knew she was only beginning. Still she did think the criticsmight have noticed more positively that she was beginning. But nothing should turn her from her purpose. She was sure the American drama needed fresh material, fresh workers. She had studied French methods, and had determined to devote the rest of her life to adapting them to the American stage. Her youth would be well spent in regenerating our drama and elevating our literature, though she should not become famous until she was an old woman. Even with such high resolves for our country’s good, Miss Hungerford could not entirely relinquish all hope of becoming renowned.
“An old woman!” She jumped up and, drawing the silk curtains slightly, gazed at herself in the mirror. She leaned forward and breathed lightly on the glass, so that the reflection might be more soft and exquisite.
“It must be hard to lose one’s good looks!” she said, half aloud. Generally, when Miss Hungerford was tempted to be vain, she laid it all to an exalted, abstract love of the beautiful. Now she put her hands through her hair at each side and drew it down loosely, so that her face was half in shadow and altogether charming. And then she put it back suddenly, for she remembered that it had fallen down so once whenshe and Stanhope were riding together, and he had looked at her in a very openly admiring way. When he had next called she had worn it so, and his look and exclamation of delight when she had entered the room had warned her what risks she was running.
She turned impatiently from the mirror and picked up a book that her “most intimate friend” had sent her several days before. She had not read it, because she had found that it commenced with a very modern love scene, and she never read love scenes. Miss Hungerford, who had a taste for epigram, once told her friend that “the science of reading is to know how to skip,” and she usually skipped thelui et elledialogues, but if they occurred in a classic, and she felt that she had no right to omit anything (she was a very conscientious sort of person) she summoned all her fortitude to aid her in getting through. Now she opened the book and read a few pages. After all, it did not seem absolutely repulsive. She decided that she had not given the book a fair trial, and she noticed with some surprise that, curiously enough from the description of him, the hero of the story must resemble Paul Stanhope. But when she found that she was thinking of Stanhope she put the book down.