CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVENThe night was mild. When Culpepper and Selina reached the car-line on a nearby street, the car with its two jogging little mules was in sight. "There comes the car, and here comes the moon," said Culpepper. "Shall we ride or walk?"They walked.Now Selina and her girl friends knew a sufficient number of boys, always had known a plentiful number in fact, Tommy and Bliss and Brent and the rest, as she termed them. Culpepper, however, was not of these: he was older, he was from away and he was studying law; many reasons in fact combined to make it gratifying to have it Culpepper.He with three other law students had rooms including a common sitting-room over a confectionery, where ordinarily young men away from home in the city would have been in boarding houses. From information dropped by Culpepper, they smoked pipes and played chess and read books by writers known as Darwin and Spencer and Buckle. That they were bold and buccaneeringly adventurous figures thus may be seen.Added to all this, Culpepper did not care forgirls, Selina being the only one he went with, and further, he had been so used to a big family connection and an overflowing house and habitual hubbub, Cousin Maria Buxton, his stepmother, being related to everybody in her part of the state, that his avowed dislike to gatherings and affairs was genuine."You men don't like to do a thing, and you say so and don't do it," wondered Selina; "Papa gave up night church long ago, and Mamma who loves to go, had to accommodate herself to it."Culpepper defended his sex. "We're honest. You're not, women as a class, I mean. My stepmother is, but then she's independent.""Independent?""Has her own means and manages her own affairs. It makes the rest of you propitiatory," bluntly."Propitiatory? What does?""Taking money as it's doled to you, or doing without."They had reached the Tuttle house now in its broad yard. Carriages were arriving, delivering their occupants at the curb and driving away. Culpepper steered Selina in at the gate, up the flagging, and with her mounted the steps."I'm glad it's you and not me," was his cheering remark.Selina herself was not feeling so glad about it all at once. Why had she not wondered earlier if any persons she knew would be here?As the door opened to admit guests just ahead of them and the light fell on the lady entering and on her evening wrap bordered with swansdown, that elegance of the hour, Selina became conscious of Mamma's knitted throw on her head and Auntie's striped scarf about her shoulders."You—you'll be for me on time?" she reminded Culpepper, "Mamma thought half-past eleven at the latest?""Can you fancy I won't?" he returned, handing her in at the door, which was a nice way of putting it and a good deal from him.Evidently it is one thing to be within the gay world and another to be of this world, and Selina in her striped scarf made her way hurriedly up the stairs. And a dressing-room filled with ladies, who know each other and who do not know you, presents parallels with Polar regions for chill and solitudes. Glances fell on her but they passed her over, or traveled elsewhere or beyond.Moods have a protean way of changing from roseate hues to grayness. Even the sustaining glory of Cousin Anna's dress seemed threatened, for as the maid removed the striped scarf, it appeared according to the cheval glass, that the radiance of spirit which earlier had appropriated the gown to its wearer, had flickered and expired, leaving the one Cousin Anna's, and the other, Selina Wistar, frightened and ill at ease and unforgivably young.She moved with the company out into the halland down the stairs. The walls were white and gold, paneled, and the stair covering was crimson; there were niches on the landing and again down the further flight of the stairs, from which looked busts of, so far as Selina knew, male Tuttles in white marble. It was august and costly and subduing, and though she had yet to live to be told it, Victorian and lamentable.The parlors as seen through the arched entrances as she came reluctantly down the steps, were spacious, with crimson carpets of a piece with that in the halls, pier glasses, crimson curtains and gilt cornices, marble mantels outvying the niched busts for whiteness, prism chandeliers and gilt chairs in rows for the approaching musicale.Mrs. Tuttle was stationed in the first parlor and by custom or arrangement or understanding everything fell away from her as it were, or so it seemed to Selina as she made her way in, the guests as they were presented retreating into the background of the far parlor.A young man of such distinguished and easy appearance as to suggest new standards for judgment of Tommy and Bliss and Brent and the rest, handed the guests on to the person of the hostess. He proved to be Mr. Tuttle Jones, a nephew of the lady's deceased husband. Selina having in time thus reached Mrs. Tuttle, raised her eyes.In the full enjoyment of her large person's sartorial splendor stood this lady, satin puffs in a high-lightsalmon, obtruding through slashes in a crimson satin waist and sleeves, from the open throat of which arose something akin to a Medici collar, the skirt flowing away in plenitude and a beaded headdress of a seemingly fish-net texture, completing the whole.And in the pier glass just behind Mrs. Tuttle, and repeated again and again and yet and yet again from a confronting pier glass at the far end of the adjoining parlor, appeared a half dozen, a dozen, a hundred, was it a thousand reflected Selinas in myrtle and high-light greens, puffs, slashes, and netted headdress, vanishing into perspective? And multitudes upon multitudes grouped about the back parlor, or so it seemed to Selina, looking on.So, it was the person of that young niece of Ann Eliza Wistar's that Mrs. Tuttle was gazing on? This lady never was known not to speak her mind."If Vincent made that dress for you, Selina, she's a fool."The mirrors repeated the accusation, but they repeated the salmon and crimson person of Mrs. Tuttle, too. She was not one to spare herself at all."And when I allowed her to make its original, or its replica as the case may be, for me, I was another."Selina found speech small and arriving from far. "Cousin Anna Tomlinson sent the dress around so that I could come.""Mr. Tuttle Jones ... sat with her through a pianoforte number.""Well, as for Anna Pope, by the grace of God, Tomlinson, there's never been any doubt in anybody's mind, she's a fool. As for Vincent, it's sheer perfidy! Go over there, in the next room, this one is cleared for the piano and the performers. Find a chair, get a place, I'll send someone to you, but for the land's sake, go and don't come back near me."Selina hurriedly sought a gilded chair in an unobtrusive position, which as the evening went on proved to be an island solitude in an immediate waste of vacant chairs. She had not even a program to bury herself in. True, Mr. Tuttle Jones, the nephew, came and sat with her through a pianoforte number, but at its close he left, to come again in time with a second polite but perfunctory young man who also in time departed.Then it happened. Selina never will forget it, never. A vocal number had reached that point where it reiteratingly bade 'Good-bye to hope, good-bye, good-bye,' and she was bitterly agreeing, when a gloved hand reached out and touched an empty gilt chair a few places beyond, while the young lady owner of the hand and of the brown eyes above it, smiled and in quiet gesture invited her to take it. What the kindly eyes had been seeing, though Selina could not know this, was a young guest awkwardly alone and betraying it in a color coming and going painfully and a chin piteously inclined to quiver.Selina went, seventeen is not so very far along the way, and the sob so long threatening in the throat within the Vincent setting, arose undisguisedly.The owner of the smiling eyes, whose own shoulders emerged from a charming and correct gown, by sharing her program afforded a momentary sheltering for recovery.At the close of the song came an intermission, during which servants came about with ices.Selina's companion chatted. "I should say we both were a little strange here. I am 'Hontas Boswell, Pocahontas Boswell, from Eadston. My aunt and I are down spending a few days at the hotel, and her old friend, Mrs. Tuttle, was good enough to ask us here to-night. Shall you and I agree to stay together?"CHAPTER EIGHTSelina and Miss Pocahontas had supper together at a little table in a bay window with Mr. Tuttle Jones as a somewhat peripatetic third, since his duties as aid to his aunt kept him constantly leaving them.In the beautiful time Selina now found herself having with this new friend, she told her about Mamma and Papa and Auntie, and even some of the rest of it, about the friends of her youth, for instance, and William Jr., whom she taught, and about Culpepper who brought her. For after all, at seventeen, is not one's little world one's world, that is to be talked about? And were not the warm brown eyes of Miss Boswell amazingly tender and encouraging as she smiled back upon this ardent young face?Mr. Jones with a murmuring sigh of further apology came and sank into his place once more with them at the bay-window table. He was a quick and alert young man, with a nice smile and when he had time, a nice manner. Was he perhaps dapper? His small moustache was immaculate, and his tie and boutonnière irreproachable.It would seem he was taking note of Selina as a possible entity for the first time. "My aunt asked me to apologize to you about something I don't seem to understand. She says she can't come herself——"—without making herself ridiculous," said this hitherto seemingly harmless young Miss Wistar with unlocked for and apparently astute bitterness. Miss Boswell looked surprised. Mr. Jones looked at Selina. He looked again. He might look away, as indeed he did, to concern himself with the final course for their table, but Selina was an entity now.At half-past eleven she came downstairs amid the departing guests, Mamma's throw upon her head, Auntie's scarf about her shoulders, still in the comforting care of Miss Pocahontas Boswell and her aunt, Miss Boswell. Miss Pocahontas was all kindness to the end. "And may we not take you home? Our carriage is double?" she asked as they reached the hall."Culpepper is to come for me," Selina explained. "He would not know what to do.""My niece tells me it is Maria Buxton's stepson, from up our way, you speak of," said Miss Boswell, the aunt; "I remember him as a very blunt, outspoken little son of a blunt father and outspoken stepmother. If he is to come for you we had surely better leave you for him."But come for her is what Culpepper failed to do. The various groups departed, the crowd in the hallwaythinned, a silver-chimed clock somewhere struck the quarter, and the street-cars would stop at twelve. The servants in the hall gathering up this and that, looked at Selina interrogatively, then departed, too.It was here that Mrs. Tuttle came out into the hall and found her. This lady seemed engrossed in the closing of the house by the servants now, and to have forgotten the matter of Cousin Anna's dress and Vincent's perfidy."Culpepper who? Maria Buxton's boy?" This in answer to Selina's explanation. "Ann Eliza didn't tell me he was living here? Is he personable? A hostess always needs young men. Wait, Reuben," this to the gray-haired negro man in livery moving around in the background, "you know I always want to satisfy myself the window fasteningsaresecure," Then to Selina, "You say he said hewouldbe here? What on earth are we going to do about it, saydearchild?"The lights were out now but for one or two, and everyone had disappeared but Mrs. Tuttle and Selina and Reuben. Seeing a reflected figure in a pier glass opposite her, and recognizing that disheveled and distraught figure to be her own, certain words heard from Juliette that afternoon, and which Selina had held to be inapt and wanting in relevancy, beat themselves to measure on her brain:"Wild was her look and stern her air,Back from her shoulders streamed her hair""Selina hurried out and joined him."And when at length, incredible, unpardonable, unforgivable length, Culpepper did come and Selina hurried out and joined him, what had he to say?"Of course you can't, I won't ask you to forgive me, Selina. There was a boxing match on, but I would not go to that. Then I remembered an expert chess game at—er—a place, a Hungarian player against home talent, but I knew I would get drawn into the moves and—well. So I went back to the rooms and the boys were all there, and we got to jawing about this new thing by a man named George, called Single Tax, and I got into the talk and forgot."Selina stopped by Adele's house on her way to her teaching the next morning. She was anxiously sweet and sorry, the natural Selina now."I was short about those quotations yesterday, Adele," she acknowledged, "and I want to say to you, and I mean to say to Judy, that I've every reason since I saw you both and was so rude, to think they are, well, the one apt and the other true. Men it seems have so many interests, they forget to come for us when they promise!" And she told Adele all about it."But I made that Mr. Jones acknowledge me," she commented. "I don't believe I could have stood all the rest if I couldn't feel I did that. I'm beginning to believe that we only grow through a sort of self-assertion, Adele. And I owe it to my self-respect,too, to say I think Auntie's old friend, Mrs. Tuttle, was very rude."She came home from her morning's work perturbed, and joined Mamma and Auntie at the lunch table, a worried frown puckering her brow."It's the last straw. This time yesterday I was so elated on every count. What's that saying of Papa's whist club when they're counting up the score? Honors are easy, isn't it? Mrs. Williams and I were so relieved when she found William could read. To-day she tells me she believes he did it deliberately to stop their talk. He took a page about a baby robin that he's heard the others read so often he knows it by heart."CHAPTER NINE"Girls play at being educated and boys are educated," Culpepper had said. Selina was to ask herself again if this was so.She and her mother went at once to call on Miss Boswell and Miss Pocahontas Boswell at their hotel. And so glowing was the further description given by Selina to her four friends of the charms of Miss Boswell the younger, that she had to go again to take them. Following this the five were invited by Miss Pocahontas to spend an afternoon with her, and she had what Maud called a little collation for them in her hotel sitting-room.Mamma and Auntie had the offer of Cousin Anna Tomlinson's carriage and coachman for this same afternoon, and in order that the young people might be free, they took Miss Boswell the elder for a drive to the cemetery, they being of a mind, and the community with them, that no more seemly spot for innocent recreation and enjoyment might be.The afternoon and its collation were so delightful, and Miss 'Hontas in a semi-formal afternoon gown was so winning, the guests went home in a state of uplift, with the exception of Amanthus who seemednon-committal. But, as Maud said, charming people are so often resentful of other people being charming.Selina spoke at home about this attitude from Amanthus. "She seemed ungenerous over our admiration for Miss Pocahontas, Mamma. Right in the middle of the afternoon she wanted to come home. Lovely as she is, she's hard to stand when she acts this way.""I've never encouraged you to find fault with your friends, Selina," reproved her mother. "No doubt Amanthus had her grounds.""I haven't a doubt she had," from Auntie. "I've watched Amanthus before. If a thing's true, Lavinia, why shouldn't Selina say it? She'll get along the better for recognizing it. Refusing to admit a fact doesn't make it less so.""I've always found Amanthus sweetly feminine," said Mamma concisely."And there isn't a man won't agree with you," from Auntie. "She's exactly to the pattern of what they look for in women. I found that out before ever Amanthus was born.""Ann Eliza, I'm astonished at your tone!""The tone goes with the rankle that's been in me a good many years, Lavinia."Selina and her group met with Maud this same evening to talk the afternoon over as was their habit after an occasion. The Addisons were prosperous and their parlors boasted velvet carpets, mirrors overthe mantels, lace curtains stiff with pattern and the seemly rest of what handsome parlors at that day should boast.Again Amanthus took exception to the enthusiasm over Miss Boswell. Perhaps there was something in the name of the lady that was suggestive of the especial line of attack. "I don't see anything so good-looking about her," she declared. "She's too dark; she looks like an Indian squab."Amanthus was given to occasional lapses in her words, and while as a rule the others were tolerant with her, this as concerning Miss Boswell was too much."Meaning squaw, we are to presume?" said Maud—generous-spirited, whole-souled Maud, scornful of such assets as mere red-brown hair and splendid skin, the emphasis with her being laid on loftier attainments!"I can't keep you from presuming," returned Amanthus with dignity,herdaffodil yellow head held high, "I said squab.""But it doesn't mean anything used so," pointed out conscientious Adele."Not a thing," corroborated little Juliette."You can't prove that it doesn't to me," returned Amanthus, which after all was true. It also was characteristic of Amanthus. It was best to change the subject. Perhaps it was unfortunate that it returned to Miss Boswell."It seems to Mamma and to me," said Selina,"that I ought to do something in the way of entertaining for Miss Pocahontas. It's more of an occasion to have it in the evening, of course, but it can't be dancing in our little house, nor music, because we can't depend on our piano any longer.""You wouldn't want the ordinary thing for her anyway," said Maud promptly and decidedly. "Selina," one saw the sweep as it were of Maudie's unbridled fancy as it mounted, one braced oneself against the oncoming rush of her enthusiasm, "I have the idea!" Did she have it, or was she merely pursuing it unaware of what it would be until she overtook it? "Unless you actually want it, let me ask Mamma if I may give it myself? I should love to. What I say," she had it now, and brought it forth with the pride of ownership, "is a conversazione!""But I do want it," Selina hastened to declare, "though," dubiously, "I hadn't thought of attempting anything like that."Amanthus spoke here and almost crossly. "Mamma says the accustomed thing is nearly always the proper thing. She told me to remember that. I can't see why you're always hunting the unusual thing? I don't know what a conversazione is.""A conversazione," said Maud loftily, "is a meeting for conversation, preferably on belle-lettres or kindred topics. It's not unlike the French salons.""I'll speak to Mamma," from Selina still more dubiously, "and if she agrees I'll go and see MissPocahontas. If I do decide on it, will you meet with me and help me plan it?""Meet here," said Maud, "and in the mean season I'll look up the subject further."When Selina went home with her proposal, Mrs. Wistar was more concerned with the obligation than the nature of the entertaining. "Have what you please, Selina, so it's reasonably simple in its cost and we can afford it. I'm glad to have you do it for Miss Boswell."Auntie demurred. "I like the idea of a party, too," she said, "but why not just a party? What does Selina, or what do the others know about a—— what is it you're proposing to have, Selina? A conversazione? It sounds to me like borrowed finery in another guise such as we let her wear to the musicale. Let's don't do it again, Lavinia. I don't fancy mental furbelows that are not her own any more than dressmaker furbelows. Let Selina give a plain party.""Why should you want to discourage the child, Ann Eliza? If she and the others want to have a conversational evening. I can see no reasonable grounds for objection."Accordingly the group met with Maud the next evening and Selina reported. "Mamma approves, but Miss Pocahontas looked a little startled when I said conversazione. Or maybe I imagined she did, for immediately she smiled charmingly and said, 'How very lovely!' Maudie, do you really think we'd better undertake it?"Having originated an idea, Maud never was known to relinquish it. "Just as you please," largely, "as I said before if you don't want it, let me give it."Selina surrendered. "You got our literary club at school into that debate with the boys from the high school," she reminded Maud uneasily however, "and what we thought at the time was applause from them, we found out afterward was laughter."They all moved uneasily at the recollection, all but Amanthus and she had not been in it."It was the subject Maud insisted on, we can see that now," said Juliette bitterly, "'Resolved that the works of Alexander Pope are atheistical in their tendency.' We ought to have known they were laughing at us when they accepted it.""If we're here to help you, Selina," said Maud loftily, "we'd better get about it. There's more than enough of our sex for the evening as it is. I've been reading up and there's very little said about women as guests at either salons or conversaziones. The important thing seems to have been the men."Amanthus showed more interest at this, but she seemed determined to be trying. "I won't come if you have Tommy Bacon."Juliette was responsible for this. At the Friday evening dancing club she had burst forth to a group of them, impetuously, "What do you suppose Tommy Bacon here has just said to me? That Maud andSelina and Adele and I are the only girls he knows whose hand he can't hold when he wants to."In the pause which had followed Amanthus had grown very red. They could not blame her now. Though Tommy measured suddenly against the requirements of a conversazione did seem very young, still his absence would leave them short.Maud was rising to the demands of the moment again so visibly that her companions as visibly looked uneasy. But her suggestion this time was practical. On the previous Saturday afternoon she and Selina and Adele, out for a walk in the Indian summer briskness had met Culpepper Buxton and his three roommates out for a tramp also. The two groups had joined forces and gone sauntering out the sycamore bordered road that led up-climbing and down-rolling to the old monastery in its secluded and wooded grounds where Louis Phillipe in his exile for a time had stayed. It not only proved a pleasant occasion, the background of the French king lending color and romance to the setting, but it added three masculine acquaintances to the lists of the ladies—Mr. Cannon, easy and talkative, Mr. Welling, provocative and in spectacles, Mr. Tate, tall and studious. Older than their own set, decidedly these three young men were acquisitions."You must ask these friends of Culpepper, Selina," proposed Maud. "And do you believe if we coax Culpepper, he'll get Algernon Charles Biggs to come? At a conversazione, after it is understood by Miss Boswell who he is, he will seem to be a card?""The two groups had ... gone sauntering out the sycamore bordered road."Algy Biggs was a near if collateral kinsman of a very real and great poet on the other side of the English-speaking world, a thing he never was allowed to forget, and which in company rendered him next to mute. Yet he was amazingly big and athletic and good-looking, great in the local militia, in the summer regattas on the river, as a stroke oar on the barge picnic parties, carrying the baskets and luggage, building the fires, fetching water."A regular Herculaneum, or whoever it was performed labors and cleaned stables," Amanthus had said of him."He won't come if he knows what we want him for," affirmed Selina, decidedly. "I'll try."Adele here pointed out the flaw in the arrangements, it being her gift from Heaven always to do that."But the ones you're naming are nearer our ages. There ought to be somebody more suitable for Miss Boswell.""Your Cousin Marcus, Selina." said Maud.Selina felt ashamed of the haste with which she said no for surely it is an unworthy thing to be overly sensitive about your kin, and nobody is any better off as to family than the total average in desirability of its members. Still there was no use running the family in on Miss Boswell if she did not have to.Aunt Juanita, married to Uncle Bruce, was Mamma's sister, and Cousin Marcus was their son. Aunt Juanita wrote letters to the newspapers on every sort of subject that engrossed her from Schopenhauer to Susan B. Anthony, and made impassioned addresses to women wherever she ran into them, at parties, picnics, church societies, anywhere, like as not having forgotten to take down one curl-paper in dressing her iron-gray hair. The subjects for the addresses varied.A forerunner, a feminine John Baptist to her day and place and sex, as Selina was one day to come to see her, then Aunt Juanita Bruce, tall, angular, unmended and ungroomed, stood alone in her community, unique in type but none the less absorbed and none the more abashed for that.As for Uncle Bruce, Mamma called him in as he came by of mornings, with his big bushy-haired head and untidy beard and his mummified and scholarly little trotting body, and brushed him off and tidied him up and retied his old black string cravat, and started him on again. Whereat if he had a book, it being his way to proceed along the streets with his nose and his spectacled eyes within the covers of some abstruse volume, he was as like as not to proceed indefinitely at his little dog-trot speed in whatsoever line started on, the levee and the river, it was said, on more than one occasion bringing him up. Uncle Bruce was a lawyer and Selina was told that he was an authority, but there was small comfort to heryoung and innocent soul in that in the face of his more salient characteristics.Cousin Marcus, their son, did editorial paragraphs on the newspapers and was clever, but then you never knew what he might be besides, being all of Aunt Juanita and Uncle Bruce and himself together. If he was asked to come at eight he would stroll round at ten, and if one wanted to close the house at twelve, Marcus would produce his cigarettes—he was the only person in town to use them and was looked on askant therefore—and monologue with brilliancy till one. He was a law unto himself and over-rode your laws. Now Selina yearned secretly and passionately, and she feared almost unworthily, to be considered correct and proper, and this, moreover, was an occasion for that charmingly correct person, Miss Pocahontas Boswell. Auntie remembered now, too, just who the Boswells were. She was sure that as a girl she had spent a night at their even then old brick home at Eadston in its setting of quaint garden. Selina was uneasy as it was, over this conversazione business of Maud's, and if the truth be told, always winced at her relatives, the Bruces."No," she said, and firmly for once in the face of Maud, "I don't think I want Marcus.""Then who—-?" began Maud, and stopped. The same thought had occurred at this point, was recurring to each of them, to four of them that is, Amanthus not knowing the person in question this time.A new assistant rector at Selina's church hadachieved a notable popularity, and of late these friends of hers, with the exception of Amanthus, had been accompanying her to services whenever they could be spared from their own. Perhaps they all blushed a bit now under detection."Why not the Reverend Mr. Thomas Wingham if he'll come?" avowed Maud stoutly despite the general abashment. "It's entirely for Miss Boswell we're considering him?"As yet Selina was the only one who had met the gentlemen, he having called upon her household in the performance of his parochial duties. Driven thus into a corner by Maud, there was no reason why he should not be invited. "I'll ask Mamma," she conceded.This person approved, and accordingly the invitation to him went the next day in Mamma's lady-like and running hand, upon her visiting card. It was hard to reconcile her being Aunt Juanita's sister, though to be sure they did have different mothers.To MeetMiss Pocahontas BoswellConversationPlease ReplyFriday EveningThe Reverend Mr. Wingham, young and good-looking gentleman that he was, promptly replying that it would be his pleasure to meet Miss Boswell on Friday evening, the affair assumed aspects entirely new, and in a different sense, significant.Mamma planned the details. The back parlor, so-called, in the Wistar home, really was the dining-room."On the evening of your little affair, Selina," she explained, "thanks to the screen which we'll set about the table beforehand, your aunt and I, at the agreed-upon moment, will slip in with coffee, chocolate, sandwiches, and plates of cake. There'll remain only the removing of the screen by your father, to disclose us in our places, I behind the chocolate pitcher, your aunt behind the coffee urn, and the adjournment of your guests to the back parlor. I'm always thankful when an occasion like this comes up, that the Wistar coffee urn isn't plate but silver."After preparations for the affair thus were well under way, Juliette, dependable if she was such a little creature, rounded up Maud and Selina at the Wistars one afternoon. "It's conversazione, of course, but what're we going to talk about?"True! One saw Maud rising to the new demands of the situation. "If we'd only thought about it sooner," she mourned. "On our walk with Culpepper and his friends the other day, Mr. Welling that I was with, the square one with spectacles, told me they were deep in a book round at their rooms that they were having daily rows over, Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations.' My uncle has it on his shelves. We might have gotten up on that and showed them."Amanthus happened in here and they explained the trouble."Why not talk in pairs and not trouble about a subject?" she asked hopefully. "Wouldn't it be a conversazione just the same?"They ignored this whereas they might have said patently tolerant things to her. Amanthus was Amanthus and they must accept her as she was, which meant be magnanimous with her rather than lofty or pitying."I'll go round to the school to-morrow," said Maud, "and ask permission to look over the old minutes of our Sappho Literary Club. By looking up our program, I'll happen on some subject of general interest that we're all up on. As soon as you're home from your teaching, Selina, come over and we'll decide.""Don't count me in on this conversazione," said Amanthus, "I'll come but I won't talk."True, as she had said once before, lovely creature that she was, sunny-haired, violet of eyes, coral-lipped, she had no need for conversation, no, nor yet wit, nor repartee, in her business of life.It almost would seem that Auntie agreed with Amanthus. "Selina's quite pretty enough, Lavinia, to do without this foolishness," she insisted. "It isn't on account of any brains she's got, or any she'll come to have, for example, that Culpepper comes round here. Selina's pretty and sweet and she looks up to him. So far as he and any other men she's likely to meet go, what on earth more do they want in her? I'm an old maid but I know."CHAPTER TENIt was the evening of the conversazione. Selina, dear child, as Auntie called her, pretty and flushed and frankly excited, wore the discredited graduation dress, furbished up once more by Mamma, and yet once more pressed by Aunt Viney."Never, never again do we let her wear garments not her own," said Mamma as Selina went down to welcome those first arrivals, the friends of her youth."Thanks be, Lavinia, for that," said Auntie. "Maybe you'll come around to my view of the mental furbelows next."When Selina reached her friends below, she found Amanthus in yellow. With a pretty mother who dressed well herself Amanthus always had charming clothes. The corn-colored knotted sash and ribbons worn by her to-night were the color of her abundant hair, and her fan of yellow feathers seemed planned to open against her red lower lip while her face dimpled and sparkled above it.It was handsome Maud's self one saw, animated and sure and leading. You hardly thought about, if you noted at all, her val-edged flounces and her string of beads, though you did rejoice in her clearwhite and red skin and her red-brown hair. Auntie said, you felt the courage and vigor of Maud's Presbyterian forebears in her straightforwardness if she did belie them in her impulsiveness.Pretty Juliette's cheeks subdued her cherry ribbons, little gypsy thing, and Adele's throat rose soft and white from her round-necked blue cashmere. As for Miss Pocahontas Boswell who arrived here—but how put into words that simplicity which is not simplicity at all, about her amber draperies? Or how make plain the appreciation and interest in her smiling eyes?Mrs. William Williams, hearing of the occasion, had sent Selina a box of hot-house flowers, half a dozen kinds at least laid on a bedding of wet smilax, the endeavor in those days being for variety and assemblage of colors. Combined with the smilax the whole made a mixed bowlful for the table between the lace curtains of the two windows and, so Selina felt, lent a riotous air of preparation and festivity to the parlors.And now the remainder of the guests came, or seemed to come, at once. Papa out in the hall, was shaking hands and exchanging little sallies and seeing to the disposition of coats and hats, after which, having sent, seen and brought the arrivals to the last one in, he went back to his paper in the next room.It was restoring to a hostess' anxious spirits now the actual moment was come, to enumerate these arrivals in greeting them and in presenting them toMiss Boswell. What can be more to the credit of a hostess than an excess of the other sex?Here were Bliss and Brent and Sam of their own set. But can it be that familiarity in the long run does breed—well, an uncompromising eye? For Bliss and Brent and Sam looked—it was the dismaying truth—they looked young! They acted young, too, falling back the one against the other at the parlor door, and reddening as they took the hand of the guest as if they did not know what to do with it! And pretty Bliss, rather spoiled on that account if the truth be told, with his ruddy hair and his rosy checks, to have put on a pink neck-tie!Culpepper and his friends arriving just here, made a gratifying and convincing show: Mr. Cannon, alert and good-looking, enlivened by a white vest; Mr. Tate, tall and decorous; Mr. Welling, square-set and in spectacles. These with Culpepper were a force in themselves.Bringing up the close came first the Reverend Mr. Wingham. Was it his high vest or his high calling that gave the distinctive quality to his good looks? And lastly came Algernon Charles Biggs, Culpepper evidently on the lookout for him.Algy was fearfully gloomy. As the company sat down he took his chair with a furtive unwillingness, Culpepper seating himself near him almost as if by intention.With this exception, Selina felt, everything was quitecomme il faut, as Maude loved to say of anoccasion, and even impressive and needless to say, gratifying. Everybody sat around, the open grate the center, so to speak, the firelight flickering on Auntie's especially burnished fender and coal-bucket and fire-irons.By the connivance of the four, Selina, Juliette, Maud and Adele, Mr. Wingham was seated next Miss Boswell. He had shown brisk pleasure on being presented to tall and dashing Maud and seemed willing to linger and parry sallies with her; he had warmed, everybody warmed to Juliette; while within the minute he was taking issue on some general proposition with Adele. But these introductory passages over, they passed him on to his place for the evening.Bliss, pretty, pouty boy, on whom Amanthus had been smiling since she dismissed Tommy, was sulky because she, from some perversity, was off to herself in an unillumined spot as it were, between the bookcase and the door. Yet she illumined it; she was a lovely creature."'Like sunshine in a shady spot,'" Selina and Adele who were near together heard Miss Boswell say to Mr. Wingham, and his attention thus directed to Amanthus, he heartily agreed.Then Selina charmingly flushed beneath the crown of her fair hair, could she but have known it, and prettily anxious, became aware that Maud had coughed, was coughing again. It was the signal agreed upon. There came a rushing as of the seasin her ears, a sinking in the pit of her person. Had they allowed Maud to coerce them into something ill-advised again? Was Auntie right? Were they about to make themselves preposterous and ridiculous? And what had Culpepper said—Culpepper there across the circle next to Algy? That girls played at having a knowledge that men had? Was he laughing at them now with that same look of lenient enjoyment in his bold blue eyes that he usually gave to Auntie? Tears almost of anger were in her eyes.Not at all! She had had these hideous moments preceding the actual plunge before, precursors always to the later joys of triumph. As, for example, when she used to lead in the debate at The Sappho, and at call for her secretarial report at the junior missionary society, and again at the moment of her figuring at her graduation. Surely she knew them for what they were now!Maud had given definite instructions beforehand. "Let your start seem casual, Selina, the mere off-throw from passing reflections."And, recalling this and drawing a restoring breath of confidence, Selina spoke to the circle of her guests, endeavoring to convey ease along with the proposition which was to furnish subject and substance for the conversazione, in a voice which would not be quite steady."But is there not a denial of the truth that the moral is necessarily part with the beautiful, in suchphrases as 'art for art's sake,' 'beauty for the sake of beauty'? So Selina."Maud, as per arrangement and program, came sweepingly to the retort direct, which she had taken from a volume belonging to The Sappho's library, called "Prepared Debates." As she had pointed out, there's nothing like getting the requisite impetus at the start!"The moral changes with the times, the place and the peoples. Art is as fixed as the gulf between itself and the ethical obligation is wide."Juliette, with cheeks afire, rushed gallantly in, also as prearranged by Maud, she being scheduled to be off-hand, playful and staccato. She was to fling the proposition on at this point to one of the guests, having been instructed which one:"If eyes were made for seeing,Then beauty is its own excuse for being,"said she gayly and insouciantly. "Isn't it so, er—Mr. Wingham?"That very good-looking and well-set-up young clergyman across the circle next to Miss Boswell, started ever so slightly at this call upon him by name. He had been looking at Amanthus, lovely creature, who needed neither vocabulary nor repartee either, in her business of life!"It is," he agreed a little hastily; then gathering himself smilingly together he said heartily, "It iseminently and conclusively its own excuse and justification."This coming from Mr. Wingham was a bit dismaying, as from the nature of his cloth and calling, he had been counted on to take the moral issue up at this point. It brought matters to an unprepared-for pause."The Puritan—" hurriedly began conscientious Adele, but with a glance at Maud, stopped. The Puritan, as taken from "Prepared Debates," was to follow in logical sequence after the support and exposition of the moral by Mr. Wingham. Adele swallowed, and withdrew.Whereupon support for the moral came from the other side of the circle, from Culpepper nobly and by no sort of prearrangement either. One could wish he would show more conviction and less jocularity about it, however. The progenitors of this evening's business were of no mind by now to be played with. Two of the friends of Culpepper, also, Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon, would bear looking after. Their markedly polite attention almost would seem to cover ecstacy and enjoyment."In the ideals of that great old people, the Greeks," queried Culpepper jocularly, "somehow I seem to recall that the symmetry of the human body was the expression of the symmetry of the inner soul?"Mr. Welling, he of the square person, resettled his spectacles. "As for example, Aesop? Or shall we say Socrates?"Mr. Cannon of the white vest burbled, then coughed to cover his defection."The Puritan—" here ventured in Adele again, with an eye as to its being proper business on Maud, who frowned darkly, whereupon Adele, flushed but obedient again withdrew.Tall Mr. Tate, the third of the friends of Culpepper, had looked across each time at Adele's remark twice ventured and twice withdrawn. With the exceptions of these glances in her direction, he like Mr. Wingham, had been looking at Amanthus. Even so, something of what Maud called scholastic earnestness sat upon Mr. Tate, and he was disposed, too, to treat the evening with gratifying sincerity. There was that in the subject twice introduced and twice withdrawn by the young lady in blue as he afterward designated Adele, which evidently appealed to him to the momentary eclipsing of Amanthus' charms."The Puritan—" he took the suggestion up the least bit sententiously and with courteous acknowledgment toward the source of its origin, "that great timely force for moral power which is moral beauty, was——"Mr. Cannon indisputably naughty by this time, pulled down his white vest and wickedly concluded the sentence—"'was at once known from other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the up-turned whites to his eyes'—how does the rest of the paragraph go, Welling?" Whichwas not in the least what Mr. Tate nor yet Adele had in mind to say.But even so, was not this the mounting joy of wit? Of give and take? Of stimulation? This the hitherto imagined delight of social intercourse?So Selina. But a hostess must keep a hostess' wit and head! Everyone must be won and led to speak! But wait, Miss Boswell, and smiling as with one lending herself prettily to the moment, is talking:"In speaking of beauty perhaps we're thinking a bit too much of the quality in an object which in regarding it excites pleasing emotions? Surely we're to believe that the terms of beauty apply to qualities that arouse admiration and approval. I for one shall insist on there being intellectual and moral beauty—and beauty of goodness and utility. But if I understand just right, Mr. Biggs here is far better qualified to define beauty than the rest of us. And with a great poet's authority behind him, too!"Big, handsome, gloomy Algy nearly fell over with his chair which at the moment he was uneasily balancing on one leg as some perception of what he was in dawned on him."I—Oh say now, any of 'em will tell you I've never read a word of him in my life. Never could find the hitch—er—don't you know, between the words and the sense. Quit it, will you, Culpepper, kicking me?""'A thing of beauty is a joy forever!'" gayly chanted dependable little Juliette who true to theprogram was to throw herself and her munitions into breaches as needed."'Handsome is as handsome does,'" suddenly observed Bliss, very young and passing bitter, with an obviousness patent to those who understood the evening's coolness between him and Amanthus, "'Beauty is only skin deep.'" Could it be that Bliss had noted the glances of two of the company, Mr. Wingham and Mr. Tate, fixed upon Amanthus even now?"And yet," it was the first spontaneous contribution to the evening from the Reverend Mr. Wingham, his gaze returning from that retired corner where it had been drawn again and again, "the eternal youth of the beautiful!" Certainly Amanthus did not need vocabulary or repartee in the least!Adele with new courage, and this time at a signal from Maud, began again: "The Puritan through his great exponent——"The doorbell rang. Kind conventions!Comme il faut!Had Selina really been congratulating herself in these gratifying terms?It was Cousin Marcus Bruce; she recognized his voice as Papa let him in.

CHAPTER SEVENThe night was mild. When Culpepper and Selina reached the car-line on a nearby street, the car with its two jogging little mules was in sight. "There comes the car, and here comes the moon," said Culpepper. "Shall we ride or walk?"They walked.Now Selina and her girl friends knew a sufficient number of boys, always had known a plentiful number in fact, Tommy and Bliss and Brent and the rest, as she termed them. Culpepper, however, was not of these: he was older, he was from away and he was studying law; many reasons in fact combined to make it gratifying to have it Culpepper.He with three other law students had rooms including a common sitting-room over a confectionery, where ordinarily young men away from home in the city would have been in boarding houses. From information dropped by Culpepper, they smoked pipes and played chess and read books by writers known as Darwin and Spencer and Buckle. That they were bold and buccaneeringly adventurous figures thus may be seen.Added to all this, Culpepper did not care forgirls, Selina being the only one he went with, and further, he had been so used to a big family connection and an overflowing house and habitual hubbub, Cousin Maria Buxton, his stepmother, being related to everybody in her part of the state, that his avowed dislike to gatherings and affairs was genuine."You men don't like to do a thing, and you say so and don't do it," wondered Selina; "Papa gave up night church long ago, and Mamma who loves to go, had to accommodate herself to it."Culpepper defended his sex. "We're honest. You're not, women as a class, I mean. My stepmother is, but then she's independent.""Independent?""Has her own means and manages her own affairs. It makes the rest of you propitiatory," bluntly."Propitiatory? What does?""Taking money as it's doled to you, or doing without."They had reached the Tuttle house now in its broad yard. Carriages were arriving, delivering their occupants at the curb and driving away. Culpepper steered Selina in at the gate, up the flagging, and with her mounted the steps."I'm glad it's you and not me," was his cheering remark.Selina herself was not feeling so glad about it all at once. Why had she not wondered earlier if any persons she knew would be here?As the door opened to admit guests just ahead of them and the light fell on the lady entering and on her evening wrap bordered with swansdown, that elegance of the hour, Selina became conscious of Mamma's knitted throw on her head and Auntie's striped scarf about her shoulders."You—you'll be for me on time?" she reminded Culpepper, "Mamma thought half-past eleven at the latest?""Can you fancy I won't?" he returned, handing her in at the door, which was a nice way of putting it and a good deal from him.Evidently it is one thing to be within the gay world and another to be of this world, and Selina in her striped scarf made her way hurriedly up the stairs. And a dressing-room filled with ladies, who know each other and who do not know you, presents parallels with Polar regions for chill and solitudes. Glances fell on her but they passed her over, or traveled elsewhere or beyond.Moods have a protean way of changing from roseate hues to grayness. Even the sustaining glory of Cousin Anna's dress seemed threatened, for as the maid removed the striped scarf, it appeared according to the cheval glass, that the radiance of spirit which earlier had appropriated the gown to its wearer, had flickered and expired, leaving the one Cousin Anna's, and the other, Selina Wistar, frightened and ill at ease and unforgivably young.She moved with the company out into the halland down the stairs. The walls were white and gold, paneled, and the stair covering was crimson; there were niches on the landing and again down the further flight of the stairs, from which looked busts of, so far as Selina knew, male Tuttles in white marble. It was august and costly and subduing, and though she had yet to live to be told it, Victorian and lamentable.The parlors as seen through the arched entrances as she came reluctantly down the steps, were spacious, with crimson carpets of a piece with that in the halls, pier glasses, crimson curtains and gilt cornices, marble mantels outvying the niched busts for whiteness, prism chandeliers and gilt chairs in rows for the approaching musicale.Mrs. Tuttle was stationed in the first parlor and by custom or arrangement or understanding everything fell away from her as it were, or so it seemed to Selina as she made her way in, the guests as they were presented retreating into the background of the far parlor.A young man of such distinguished and easy appearance as to suggest new standards for judgment of Tommy and Bliss and Brent and the rest, handed the guests on to the person of the hostess. He proved to be Mr. Tuttle Jones, a nephew of the lady's deceased husband. Selina having in time thus reached Mrs. Tuttle, raised her eyes.In the full enjoyment of her large person's sartorial splendor stood this lady, satin puffs in a high-lightsalmon, obtruding through slashes in a crimson satin waist and sleeves, from the open throat of which arose something akin to a Medici collar, the skirt flowing away in plenitude and a beaded headdress of a seemingly fish-net texture, completing the whole.And in the pier glass just behind Mrs. Tuttle, and repeated again and again and yet and yet again from a confronting pier glass at the far end of the adjoining parlor, appeared a half dozen, a dozen, a hundred, was it a thousand reflected Selinas in myrtle and high-light greens, puffs, slashes, and netted headdress, vanishing into perspective? And multitudes upon multitudes grouped about the back parlor, or so it seemed to Selina, looking on.So, it was the person of that young niece of Ann Eliza Wistar's that Mrs. Tuttle was gazing on? This lady never was known not to speak her mind."If Vincent made that dress for you, Selina, she's a fool."The mirrors repeated the accusation, but they repeated the salmon and crimson person of Mrs. Tuttle, too. She was not one to spare herself at all."And when I allowed her to make its original, or its replica as the case may be, for me, I was another."Selina found speech small and arriving from far. "Cousin Anna Tomlinson sent the dress around so that I could come.""Mr. Tuttle Jones ... sat with her through a pianoforte number.""Well, as for Anna Pope, by the grace of God, Tomlinson, there's never been any doubt in anybody's mind, she's a fool. As for Vincent, it's sheer perfidy! Go over there, in the next room, this one is cleared for the piano and the performers. Find a chair, get a place, I'll send someone to you, but for the land's sake, go and don't come back near me."Selina hurriedly sought a gilded chair in an unobtrusive position, which as the evening went on proved to be an island solitude in an immediate waste of vacant chairs. She had not even a program to bury herself in. True, Mr. Tuttle Jones, the nephew, came and sat with her through a pianoforte number, but at its close he left, to come again in time with a second polite but perfunctory young man who also in time departed.Then it happened. Selina never will forget it, never. A vocal number had reached that point where it reiteratingly bade 'Good-bye to hope, good-bye, good-bye,' and she was bitterly agreeing, when a gloved hand reached out and touched an empty gilt chair a few places beyond, while the young lady owner of the hand and of the brown eyes above it, smiled and in quiet gesture invited her to take it. What the kindly eyes had been seeing, though Selina could not know this, was a young guest awkwardly alone and betraying it in a color coming and going painfully and a chin piteously inclined to quiver.Selina went, seventeen is not so very far along the way, and the sob so long threatening in the throat within the Vincent setting, arose undisguisedly.The owner of the smiling eyes, whose own shoulders emerged from a charming and correct gown, by sharing her program afforded a momentary sheltering for recovery.At the close of the song came an intermission, during which servants came about with ices.Selina's companion chatted. "I should say we both were a little strange here. I am 'Hontas Boswell, Pocahontas Boswell, from Eadston. My aunt and I are down spending a few days at the hotel, and her old friend, Mrs. Tuttle, was good enough to ask us here to-night. Shall you and I agree to stay together?"

The night was mild. When Culpepper and Selina reached the car-line on a nearby street, the car with its two jogging little mules was in sight. "There comes the car, and here comes the moon," said Culpepper. "Shall we ride or walk?"

They walked.

Now Selina and her girl friends knew a sufficient number of boys, always had known a plentiful number in fact, Tommy and Bliss and Brent and the rest, as she termed them. Culpepper, however, was not of these: he was older, he was from away and he was studying law; many reasons in fact combined to make it gratifying to have it Culpepper.

He with three other law students had rooms including a common sitting-room over a confectionery, where ordinarily young men away from home in the city would have been in boarding houses. From information dropped by Culpepper, they smoked pipes and played chess and read books by writers known as Darwin and Spencer and Buckle. That they were bold and buccaneeringly adventurous figures thus may be seen.

Added to all this, Culpepper did not care forgirls, Selina being the only one he went with, and further, he had been so used to a big family connection and an overflowing house and habitual hubbub, Cousin Maria Buxton, his stepmother, being related to everybody in her part of the state, that his avowed dislike to gatherings and affairs was genuine.

"You men don't like to do a thing, and you say so and don't do it," wondered Selina; "Papa gave up night church long ago, and Mamma who loves to go, had to accommodate herself to it."

Culpepper defended his sex. "We're honest. You're not, women as a class, I mean. My stepmother is, but then she's independent."

"Independent?"

"Has her own means and manages her own affairs. It makes the rest of you propitiatory," bluntly.

"Propitiatory? What does?"

"Taking money as it's doled to you, or doing without."

They had reached the Tuttle house now in its broad yard. Carriages were arriving, delivering their occupants at the curb and driving away. Culpepper steered Selina in at the gate, up the flagging, and with her mounted the steps.

"I'm glad it's you and not me," was his cheering remark.

Selina herself was not feeling so glad about it all at once. Why had she not wondered earlier if any persons she knew would be here?

As the door opened to admit guests just ahead of them and the light fell on the lady entering and on her evening wrap bordered with swansdown, that elegance of the hour, Selina became conscious of Mamma's knitted throw on her head and Auntie's striped scarf about her shoulders.

"You—you'll be for me on time?" she reminded Culpepper, "Mamma thought half-past eleven at the latest?"

"Can you fancy I won't?" he returned, handing her in at the door, which was a nice way of putting it and a good deal from him.

Evidently it is one thing to be within the gay world and another to be of this world, and Selina in her striped scarf made her way hurriedly up the stairs. And a dressing-room filled with ladies, who know each other and who do not know you, presents parallels with Polar regions for chill and solitudes. Glances fell on her but they passed her over, or traveled elsewhere or beyond.

Moods have a protean way of changing from roseate hues to grayness. Even the sustaining glory of Cousin Anna's dress seemed threatened, for as the maid removed the striped scarf, it appeared according to the cheval glass, that the radiance of spirit which earlier had appropriated the gown to its wearer, had flickered and expired, leaving the one Cousin Anna's, and the other, Selina Wistar, frightened and ill at ease and unforgivably young.

She moved with the company out into the halland down the stairs. The walls were white and gold, paneled, and the stair covering was crimson; there were niches on the landing and again down the further flight of the stairs, from which looked busts of, so far as Selina knew, male Tuttles in white marble. It was august and costly and subduing, and though she had yet to live to be told it, Victorian and lamentable.

The parlors as seen through the arched entrances as she came reluctantly down the steps, were spacious, with crimson carpets of a piece with that in the halls, pier glasses, crimson curtains and gilt cornices, marble mantels outvying the niched busts for whiteness, prism chandeliers and gilt chairs in rows for the approaching musicale.

Mrs. Tuttle was stationed in the first parlor and by custom or arrangement or understanding everything fell away from her as it were, or so it seemed to Selina as she made her way in, the guests as they were presented retreating into the background of the far parlor.

A young man of such distinguished and easy appearance as to suggest new standards for judgment of Tommy and Bliss and Brent and the rest, handed the guests on to the person of the hostess. He proved to be Mr. Tuttle Jones, a nephew of the lady's deceased husband. Selina having in time thus reached Mrs. Tuttle, raised her eyes.

In the full enjoyment of her large person's sartorial splendor stood this lady, satin puffs in a high-lightsalmon, obtruding through slashes in a crimson satin waist and sleeves, from the open throat of which arose something akin to a Medici collar, the skirt flowing away in plenitude and a beaded headdress of a seemingly fish-net texture, completing the whole.

And in the pier glass just behind Mrs. Tuttle, and repeated again and again and yet and yet again from a confronting pier glass at the far end of the adjoining parlor, appeared a half dozen, a dozen, a hundred, was it a thousand reflected Selinas in myrtle and high-light greens, puffs, slashes, and netted headdress, vanishing into perspective? And multitudes upon multitudes grouped about the back parlor, or so it seemed to Selina, looking on.

So, it was the person of that young niece of Ann Eliza Wistar's that Mrs. Tuttle was gazing on? This lady never was known not to speak her mind.

"If Vincent made that dress for you, Selina, she's a fool."

The mirrors repeated the accusation, but they repeated the salmon and crimson person of Mrs. Tuttle, too. She was not one to spare herself at all.

"And when I allowed her to make its original, or its replica as the case may be, for me, I was another."

Selina found speech small and arriving from far. "Cousin Anna Tomlinson sent the dress around so that I could come."

"Mr. Tuttle Jones ... sat with her through a pianoforte number."

"Mr. Tuttle Jones ... sat with her through a pianoforte number."

"Mr. Tuttle Jones ... sat with her through a pianoforte number."

"Well, as for Anna Pope, by the grace of God, Tomlinson, there's never been any doubt in anybody's mind, she's a fool. As for Vincent, it's sheer perfidy! Go over there, in the next room, this one is cleared for the piano and the performers. Find a chair, get a place, I'll send someone to you, but for the land's sake, go and don't come back near me."

Selina hurriedly sought a gilded chair in an unobtrusive position, which as the evening went on proved to be an island solitude in an immediate waste of vacant chairs. She had not even a program to bury herself in. True, Mr. Tuttle Jones, the nephew, came and sat with her through a pianoforte number, but at its close he left, to come again in time with a second polite but perfunctory young man who also in time departed.

Then it happened. Selina never will forget it, never. A vocal number had reached that point where it reiteratingly bade 'Good-bye to hope, good-bye, good-bye,' and she was bitterly agreeing, when a gloved hand reached out and touched an empty gilt chair a few places beyond, while the young lady owner of the hand and of the brown eyes above it, smiled and in quiet gesture invited her to take it. What the kindly eyes had been seeing, though Selina could not know this, was a young guest awkwardly alone and betraying it in a color coming and going painfully and a chin piteously inclined to quiver.

Selina went, seventeen is not so very far along the way, and the sob so long threatening in the throat within the Vincent setting, arose undisguisedly.

The owner of the smiling eyes, whose own shoulders emerged from a charming and correct gown, by sharing her program afforded a momentary sheltering for recovery.

At the close of the song came an intermission, during which servants came about with ices.

Selina's companion chatted. "I should say we both were a little strange here. I am 'Hontas Boswell, Pocahontas Boswell, from Eadston. My aunt and I are down spending a few days at the hotel, and her old friend, Mrs. Tuttle, was good enough to ask us here to-night. Shall you and I agree to stay together?"

CHAPTER EIGHTSelina and Miss Pocahontas had supper together at a little table in a bay window with Mr. Tuttle Jones as a somewhat peripatetic third, since his duties as aid to his aunt kept him constantly leaving them.In the beautiful time Selina now found herself having with this new friend, she told her about Mamma and Papa and Auntie, and even some of the rest of it, about the friends of her youth, for instance, and William Jr., whom she taught, and about Culpepper who brought her. For after all, at seventeen, is not one's little world one's world, that is to be talked about? And were not the warm brown eyes of Miss Boswell amazingly tender and encouraging as she smiled back upon this ardent young face?Mr. Jones with a murmuring sigh of further apology came and sank into his place once more with them at the bay-window table. He was a quick and alert young man, with a nice smile and when he had time, a nice manner. Was he perhaps dapper? His small moustache was immaculate, and his tie and boutonnière irreproachable.It would seem he was taking note of Selina as a possible entity for the first time. "My aunt asked me to apologize to you about something I don't seem to understand. She says she can't come herself——"—without making herself ridiculous," said this hitherto seemingly harmless young Miss Wistar with unlocked for and apparently astute bitterness. Miss Boswell looked surprised. Mr. Jones looked at Selina. He looked again. He might look away, as indeed he did, to concern himself with the final course for their table, but Selina was an entity now.At half-past eleven she came downstairs amid the departing guests, Mamma's throw upon her head, Auntie's scarf about her shoulders, still in the comforting care of Miss Pocahontas Boswell and her aunt, Miss Boswell. Miss Pocahontas was all kindness to the end. "And may we not take you home? Our carriage is double?" she asked as they reached the hall."Culpepper is to come for me," Selina explained. "He would not know what to do.""My niece tells me it is Maria Buxton's stepson, from up our way, you speak of," said Miss Boswell, the aunt; "I remember him as a very blunt, outspoken little son of a blunt father and outspoken stepmother. If he is to come for you we had surely better leave you for him."But come for her is what Culpepper failed to do. The various groups departed, the crowd in the hallwaythinned, a silver-chimed clock somewhere struck the quarter, and the street-cars would stop at twelve. The servants in the hall gathering up this and that, looked at Selina interrogatively, then departed, too.It was here that Mrs. Tuttle came out into the hall and found her. This lady seemed engrossed in the closing of the house by the servants now, and to have forgotten the matter of Cousin Anna's dress and Vincent's perfidy."Culpepper who? Maria Buxton's boy?" This in answer to Selina's explanation. "Ann Eliza didn't tell me he was living here? Is he personable? A hostess always needs young men. Wait, Reuben," this to the gray-haired negro man in livery moving around in the background, "you know I always want to satisfy myself the window fasteningsaresecure," Then to Selina, "You say he said hewouldbe here? What on earth are we going to do about it, saydearchild?"The lights were out now but for one or two, and everyone had disappeared but Mrs. Tuttle and Selina and Reuben. Seeing a reflected figure in a pier glass opposite her, and recognizing that disheveled and distraught figure to be her own, certain words heard from Juliette that afternoon, and which Selina had held to be inapt and wanting in relevancy, beat themselves to measure on her brain:"Wild was her look and stern her air,Back from her shoulders streamed her hair""Selina hurried out and joined him."And when at length, incredible, unpardonable, unforgivable length, Culpepper did come and Selina hurried out and joined him, what had he to say?"Of course you can't, I won't ask you to forgive me, Selina. There was a boxing match on, but I would not go to that. Then I remembered an expert chess game at—er—a place, a Hungarian player against home talent, but I knew I would get drawn into the moves and—well. So I went back to the rooms and the boys were all there, and we got to jawing about this new thing by a man named George, called Single Tax, and I got into the talk and forgot."Selina stopped by Adele's house on her way to her teaching the next morning. She was anxiously sweet and sorry, the natural Selina now."I was short about those quotations yesterday, Adele," she acknowledged, "and I want to say to you, and I mean to say to Judy, that I've every reason since I saw you both and was so rude, to think they are, well, the one apt and the other true. Men it seems have so many interests, they forget to come for us when they promise!" And she told Adele all about it."But I made that Mr. Jones acknowledge me," she commented. "I don't believe I could have stood all the rest if I couldn't feel I did that. I'm beginning to believe that we only grow through a sort of self-assertion, Adele. And I owe it to my self-respect,too, to say I think Auntie's old friend, Mrs. Tuttle, was very rude."She came home from her morning's work perturbed, and joined Mamma and Auntie at the lunch table, a worried frown puckering her brow."It's the last straw. This time yesterday I was so elated on every count. What's that saying of Papa's whist club when they're counting up the score? Honors are easy, isn't it? Mrs. Williams and I were so relieved when she found William could read. To-day she tells me she believes he did it deliberately to stop their talk. He took a page about a baby robin that he's heard the others read so often he knows it by heart."

Selina and Miss Pocahontas had supper together at a little table in a bay window with Mr. Tuttle Jones as a somewhat peripatetic third, since his duties as aid to his aunt kept him constantly leaving them.

In the beautiful time Selina now found herself having with this new friend, she told her about Mamma and Papa and Auntie, and even some of the rest of it, about the friends of her youth, for instance, and William Jr., whom she taught, and about Culpepper who brought her. For after all, at seventeen, is not one's little world one's world, that is to be talked about? And were not the warm brown eyes of Miss Boswell amazingly tender and encouraging as she smiled back upon this ardent young face?

Mr. Jones with a murmuring sigh of further apology came and sank into his place once more with them at the bay-window table. He was a quick and alert young man, with a nice smile and when he had time, a nice manner. Was he perhaps dapper? His small moustache was immaculate, and his tie and boutonnière irreproachable.

It would seem he was taking note of Selina as a possible entity for the first time. "My aunt asked me to apologize to you about something I don't seem to understand. She says she can't come herself——

"—without making herself ridiculous," said this hitherto seemingly harmless young Miss Wistar with unlocked for and apparently astute bitterness. Miss Boswell looked surprised. Mr. Jones looked at Selina. He looked again. He might look away, as indeed he did, to concern himself with the final course for their table, but Selina was an entity now.

At half-past eleven she came downstairs amid the departing guests, Mamma's throw upon her head, Auntie's scarf about her shoulders, still in the comforting care of Miss Pocahontas Boswell and her aunt, Miss Boswell. Miss Pocahontas was all kindness to the end. "And may we not take you home? Our carriage is double?" she asked as they reached the hall.

"Culpepper is to come for me," Selina explained. "He would not know what to do."

"My niece tells me it is Maria Buxton's stepson, from up our way, you speak of," said Miss Boswell, the aunt; "I remember him as a very blunt, outspoken little son of a blunt father and outspoken stepmother. If he is to come for you we had surely better leave you for him."

But come for her is what Culpepper failed to do. The various groups departed, the crowd in the hallwaythinned, a silver-chimed clock somewhere struck the quarter, and the street-cars would stop at twelve. The servants in the hall gathering up this and that, looked at Selina interrogatively, then departed, too.

It was here that Mrs. Tuttle came out into the hall and found her. This lady seemed engrossed in the closing of the house by the servants now, and to have forgotten the matter of Cousin Anna's dress and Vincent's perfidy.

"Culpepper who? Maria Buxton's boy?" This in answer to Selina's explanation. "Ann Eliza didn't tell me he was living here? Is he personable? A hostess always needs young men. Wait, Reuben," this to the gray-haired negro man in livery moving around in the background, "you know I always want to satisfy myself the window fasteningsaresecure," Then to Selina, "You say he said hewouldbe here? What on earth are we going to do about it, saydearchild?"

The lights were out now but for one or two, and everyone had disappeared but Mrs. Tuttle and Selina and Reuben. Seeing a reflected figure in a pier glass opposite her, and recognizing that disheveled and distraught figure to be her own, certain words heard from Juliette that afternoon, and which Selina had held to be inapt and wanting in relevancy, beat themselves to measure on her brain:

"Wild was her look and stern her air,Back from her shoulders streamed her hair"

"Selina hurried out and joined him."

"Selina hurried out and joined him."

"Selina hurried out and joined him."

And when at length, incredible, unpardonable, unforgivable length, Culpepper did come and Selina hurried out and joined him, what had he to say?

"Of course you can't, I won't ask you to forgive me, Selina. There was a boxing match on, but I would not go to that. Then I remembered an expert chess game at—er—a place, a Hungarian player against home talent, but I knew I would get drawn into the moves and—well. So I went back to the rooms and the boys were all there, and we got to jawing about this new thing by a man named George, called Single Tax, and I got into the talk and forgot."

Selina stopped by Adele's house on her way to her teaching the next morning. She was anxiously sweet and sorry, the natural Selina now.

"I was short about those quotations yesterday, Adele," she acknowledged, "and I want to say to you, and I mean to say to Judy, that I've every reason since I saw you both and was so rude, to think they are, well, the one apt and the other true. Men it seems have so many interests, they forget to come for us when they promise!" And she told Adele all about it.

"But I made that Mr. Jones acknowledge me," she commented. "I don't believe I could have stood all the rest if I couldn't feel I did that. I'm beginning to believe that we only grow through a sort of self-assertion, Adele. And I owe it to my self-respect,too, to say I think Auntie's old friend, Mrs. Tuttle, was very rude."

She came home from her morning's work perturbed, and joined Mamma and Auntie at the lunch table, a worried frown puckering her brow.

"It's the last straw. This time yesterday I was so elated on every count. What's that saying of Papa's whist club when they're counting up the score? Honors are easy, isn't it? Mrs. Williams and I were so relieved when she found William could read. To-day she tells me she believes he did it deliberately to stop their talk. He took a page about a baby robin that he's heard the others read so often he knows it by heart."

CHAPTER NINE"Girls play at being educated and boys are educated," Culpepper had said. Selina was to ask herself again if this was so.She and her mother went at once to call on Miss Boswell and Miss Pocahontas Boswell at their hotel. And so glowing was the further description given by Selina to her four friends of the charms of Miss Boswell the younger, that she had to go again to take them. Following this the five were invited by Miss Pocahontas to spend an afternoon with her, and she had what Maud called a little collation for them in her hotel sitting-room.Mamma and Auntie had the offer of Cousin Anna Tomlinson's carriage and coachman for this same afternoon, and in order that the young people might be free, they took Miss Boswell the elder for a drive to the cemetery, they being of a mind, and the community with them, that no more seemly spot for innocent recreation and enjoyment might be.The afternoon and its collation were so delightful, and Miss 'Hontas in a semi-formal afternoon gown was so winning, the guests went home in a state of uplift, with the exception of Amanthus who seemednon-committal. But, as Maud said, charming people are so often resentful of other people being charming.Selina spoke at home about this attitude from Amanthus. "She seemed ungenerous over our admiration for Miss Pocahontas, Mamma. Right in the middle of the afternoon she wanted to come home. Lovely as she is, she's hard to stand when she acts this way.""I've never encouraged you to find fault with your friends, Selina," reproved her mother. "No doubt Amanthus had her grounds.""I haven't a doubt she had," from Auntie. "I've watched Amanthus before. If a thing's true, Lavinia, why shouldn't Selina say it? She'll get along the better for recognizing it. Refusing to admit a fact doesn't make it less so.""I've always found Amanthus sweetly feminine," said Mamma concisely."And there isn't a man won't agree with you," from Auntie. "She's exactly to the pattern of what they look for in women. I found that out before ever Amanthus was born.""Ann Eliza, I'm astonished at your tone!""The tone goes with the rankle that's been in me a good many years, Lavinia."Selina and her group met with Maud this same evening to talk the afternoon over as was their habit after an occasion. The Addisons were prosperous and their parlors boasted velvet carpets, mirrors overthe mantels, lace curtains stiff with pattern and the seemly rest of what handsome parlors at that day should boast.Again Amanthus took exception to the enthusiasm over Miss Boswell. Perhaps there was something in the name of the lady that was suggestive of the especial line of attack. "I don't see anything so good-looking about her," she declared. "She's too dark; she looks like an Indian squab."Amanthus was given to occasional lapses in her words, and while as a rule the others were tolerant with her, this as concerning Miss Boswell was too much."Meaning squaw, we are to presume?" said Maud—generous-spirited, whole-souled Maud, scornful of such assets as mere red-brown hair and splendid skin, the emphasis with her being laid on loftier attainments!"I can't keep you from presuming," returned Amanthus with dignity,herdaffodil yellow head held high, "I said squab.""But it doesn't mean anything used so," pointed out conscientious Adele."Not a thing," corroborated little Juliette."You can't prove that it doesn't to me," returned Amanthus, which after all was true. It also was characteristic of Amanthus. It was best to change the subject. Perhaps it was unfortunate that it returned to Miss Boswell."It seems to Mamma and to me," said Selina,"that I ought to do something in the way of entertaining for Miss Pocahontas. It's more of an occasion to have it in the evening, of course, but it can't be dancing in our little house, nor music, because we can't depend on our piano any longer.""You wouldn't want the ordinary thing for her anyway," said Maud promptly and decidedly. "Selina," one saw the sweep as it were of Maudie's unbridled fancy as it mounted, one braced oneself against the oncoming rush of her enthusiasm, "I have the idea!" Did she have it, or was she merely pursuing it unaware of what it would be until she overtook it? "Unless you actually want it, let me ask Mamma if I may give it myself? I should love to. What I say," she had it now, and brought it forth with the pride of ownership, "is a conversazione!""But I do want it," Selina hastened to declare, "though," dubiously, "I hadn't thought of attempting anything like that."Amanthus spoke here and almost crossly. "Mamma says the accustomed thing is nearly always the proper thing. She told me to remember that. I can't see why you're always hunting the unusual thing? I don't know what a conversazione is.""A conversazione," said Maud loftily, "is a meeting for conversation, preferably on belle-lettres or kindred topics. It's not unlike the French salons.""I'll speak to Mamma," from Selina still more dubiously, "and if she agrees I'll go and see MissPocahontas. If I do decide on it, will you meet with me and help me plan it?""Meet here," said Maud, "and in the mean season I'll look up the subject further."When Selina went home with her proposal, Mrs. Wistar was more concerned with the obligation than the nature of the entertaining. "Have what you please, Selina, so it's reasonably simple in its cost and we can afford it. I'm glad to have you do it for Miss Boswell."Auntie demurred. "I like the idea of a party, too," she said, "but why not just a party? What does Selina, or what do the others know about a—— what is it you're proposing to have, Selina? A conversazione? It sounds to me like borrowed finery in another guise such as we let her wear to the musicale. Let's don't do it again, Lavinia. I don't fancy mental furbelows that are not her own any more than dressmaker furbelows. Let Selina give a plain party.""Why should you want to discourage the child, Ann Eliza? If she and the others want to have a conversational evening. I can see no reasonable grounds for objection."Accordingly the group met with Maud the next evening and Selina reported. "Mamma approves, but Miss Pocahontas looked a little startled when I said conversazione. Or maybe I imagined she did, for immediately she smiled charmingly and said, 'How very lovely!' Maudie, do you really think we'd better undertake it?"Having originated an idea, Maud never was known to relinquish it. "Just as you please," largely, "as I said before if you don't want it, let me give it."Selina surrendered. "You got our literary club at school into that debate with the boys from the high school," she reminded Maud uneasily however, "and what we thought at the time was applause from them, we found out afterward was laughter."They all moved uneasily at the recollection, all but Amanthus and she had not been in it."It was the subject Maud insisted on, we can see that now," said Juliette bitterly, "'Resolved that the works of Alexander Pope are atheistical in their tendency.' We ought to have known they were laughing at us when they accepted it.""If we're here to help you, Selina," said Maud loftily, "we'd better get about it. There's more than enough of our sex for the evening as it is. I've been reading up and there's very little said about women as guests at either salons or conversaziones. The important thing seems to have been the men."Amanthus showed more interest at this, but she seemed determined to be trying. "I won't come if you have Tommy Bacon."Juliette was responsible for this. At the Friday evening dancing club she had burst forth to a group of them, impetuously, "What do you suppose Tommy Bacon here has just said to me? That Maud andSelina and Adele and I are the only girls he knows whose hand he can't hold when he wants to."In the pause which had followed Amanthus had grown very red. They could not blame her now. Though Tommy measured suddenly against the requirements of a conversazione did seem very young, still his absence would leave them short.Maud was rising to the demands of the moment again so visibly that her companions as visibly looked uneasy. But her suggestion this time was practical. On the previous Saturday afternoon she and Selina and Adele, out for a walk in the Indian summer briskness had met Culpepper Buxton and his three roommates out for a tramp also. The two groups had joined forces and gone sauntering out the sycamore bordered road that led up-climbing and down-rolling to the old monastery in its secluded and wooded grounds where Louis Phillipe in his exile for a time had stayed. It not only proved a pleasant occasion, the background of the French king lending color and romance to the setting, but it added three masculine acquaintances to the lists of the ladies—Mr. Cannon, easy and talkative, Mr. Welling, provocative and in spectacles, Mr. Tate, tall and studious. Older than their own set, decidedly these three young men were acquisitions."You must ask these friends of Culpepper, Selina," proposed Maud. "And do you believe if we coax Culpepper, he'll get Algernon Charles Biggs to come? At a conversazione, after it is understood by Miss Boswell who he is, he will seem to be a card?""The two groups had ... gone sauntering out the sycamore bordered road."Algy Biggs was a near if collateral kinsman of a very real and great poet on the other side of the English-speaking world, a thing he never was allowed to forget, and which in company rendered him next to mute. Yet he was amazingly big and athletic and good-looking, great in the local militia, in the summer regattas on the river, as a stroke oar on the barge picnic parties, carrying the baskets and luggage, building the fires, fetching water."A regular Herculaneum, or whoever it was performed labors and cleaned stables," Amanthus had said of him."He won't come if he knows what we want him for," affirmed Selina, decidedly. "I'll try."Adele here pointed out the flaw in the arrangements, it being her gift from Heaven always to do that."But the ones you're naming are nearer our ages. There ought to be somebody more suitable for Miss Boswell.""Your Cousin Marcus, Selina." said Maud.Selina felt ashamed of the haste with which she said no for surely it is an unworthy thing to be overly sensitive about your kin, and nobody is any better off as to family than the total average in desirability of its members. Still there was no use running the family in on Miss Boswell if she did not have to.Aunt Juanita, married to Uncle Bruce, was Mamma's sister, and Cousin Marcus was their son. Aunt Juanita wrote letters to the newspapers on every sort of subject that engrossed her from Schopenhauer to Susan B. Anthony, and made impassioned addresses to women wherever she ran into them, at parties, picnics, church societies, anywhere, like as not having forgotten to take down one curl-paper in dressing her iron-gray hair. The subjects for the addresses varied.A forerunner, a feminine John Baptist to her day and place and sex, as Selina was one day to come to see her, then Aunt Juanita Bruce, tall, angular, unmended and ungroomed, stood alone in her community, unique in type but none the less absorbed and none the more abashed for that.As for Uncle Bruce, Mamma called him in as he came by of mornings, with his big bushy-haired head and untidy beard and his mummified and scholarly little trotting body, and brushed him off and tidied him up and retied his old black string cravat, and started him on again. Whereat if he had a book, it being his way to proceed along the streets with his nose and his spectacled eyes within the covers of some abstruse volume, he was as like as not to proceed indefinitely at his little dog-trot speed in whatsoever line started on, the levee and the river, it was said, on more than one occasion bringing him up. Uncle Bruce was a lawyer and Selina was told that he was an authority, but there was small comfort to heryoung and innocent soul in that in the face of his more salient characteristics.Cousin Marcus, their son, did editorial paragraphs on the newspapers and was clever, but then you never knew what he might be besides, being all of Aunt Juanita and Uncle Bruce and himself together. If he was asked to come at eight he would stroll round at ten, and if one wanted to close the house at twelve, Marcus would produce his cigarettes—he was the only person in town to use them and was looked on askant therefore—and monologue with brilliancy till one. He was a law unto himself and over-rode your laws. Now Selina yearned secretly and passionately, and she feared almost unworthily, to be considered correct and proper, and this, moreover, was an occasion for that charmingly correct person, Miss Pocahontas Boswell. Auntie remembered now, too, just who the Boswells were. She was sure that as a girl she had spent a night at their even then old brick home at Eadston in its setting of quaint garden. Selina was uneasy as it was, over this conversazione business of Maud's, and if the truth be told, always winced at her relatives, the Bruces."No," she said, and firmly for once in the face of Maud, "I don't think I want Marcus.""Then who—-?" began Maud, and stopped. The same thought had occurred at this point, was recurring to each of them, to four of them that is, Amanthus not knowing the person in question this time.A new assistant rector at Selina's church hadachieved a notable popularity, and of late these friends of hers, with the exception of Amanthus, had been accompanying her to services whenever they could be spared from their own. Perhaps they all blushed a bit now under detection."Why not the Reverend Mr. Thomas Wingham if he'll come?" avowed Maud stoutly despite the general abashment. "It's entirely for Miss Boswell we're considering him?"As yet Selina was the only one who had met the gentlemen, he having called upon her household in the performance of his parochial duties. Driven thus into a corner by Maud, there was no reason why he should not be invited. "I'll ask Mamma," she conceded.This person approved, and accordingly the invitation to him went the next day in Mamma's lady-like and running hand, upon her visiting card. It was hard to reconcile her being Aunt Juanita's sister, though to be sure they did have different mothers.To MeetMiss Pocahontas BoswellConversationPlease ReplyFriday EveningThe Reverend Mr. Wingham, young and good-looking gentleman that he was, promptly replying that it would be his pleasure to meet Miss Boswell on Friday evening, the affair assumed aspects entirely new, and in a different sense, significant.Mamma planned the details. The back parlor, so-called, in the Wistar home, really was the dining-room."On the evening of your little affair, Selina," she explained, "thanks to the screen which we'll set about the table beforehand, your aunt and I, at the agreed-upon moment, will slip in with coffee, chocolate, sandwiches, and plates of cake. There'll remain only the removing of the screen by your father, to disclose us in our places, I behind the chocolate pitcher, your aunt behind the coffee urn, and the adjournment of your guests to the back parlor. I'm always thankful when an occasion like this comes up, that the Wistar coffee urn isn't plate but silver."After preparations for the affair thus were well under way, Juliette, dependable if she was such a little creature, rounded up Maud and Selina at the Wistars one afternoon. "It's conversazione, of course, but what're we going to talk about?"True! One saw Maud rising to the new demands of the situation. "If we'd only thought about it sooner," she mourned. "On our walk with Culpepper and his friends the other day, Mr. Welling that I was with, the square one with spectacles, told me they were deep in a book round at their rooms that they were having daily rows over, Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations.' My uncle has it on his shelves. We might have gotten up on that and showed them."Amanthus happened in here and they explained the trouble."Why not talk in pairs and not trouble about a subject?" she asked hopefully. "Wouldn't it be a conversazione just the same?"They ignored this whereas they might have said patently tolerant things to her. Amanthus was Amanthus and they must accept her as she was, which meant be magnanimous with her rather than lofty or pitying."I'll go round to the school to-morrow," said Maud, "and ask permission to look over the old minutes of our Sappho Literary Club. By looking up our program, I'll happen on some subject of general interest that we're all up on. As soon as you're home from your teaching, Selina, come over and we'll decide.""Don't count me in on this conversazione," said Amanthus, "I'll come but I won't talk."True, as she had said once before, lovely creature that she was, sunny-haired, violet of eyes, coral-lipped, she had no need for conversation, no, nor yet wit, nor repartee, in her business of life.It almost would seem that Auntie agreed with Amanthus. "Selina's quite pretty enough, Lavinia, to do without this foolishness," she insisted. "It isn't on account of any brains she's got, or any she'll come to have, for example, that Culpepper comes round here. Selina's pretty and sweet and she looks up to him. So far as he and any other men she's likely to meet go, what on earth more do they want in her? I'm an old maid but I know."

"Girls play at being educated and boys are educated," Culpepper had said. Selina was to ask herself again if this was so.

She and her mother went at once to call on Miss Boswell and Miss Pocahontas Boswell at their hotel. And so glowing was the further description given by Selina to her four friends of the charms of Miss Boswell the younger, that she had to go again to take them. Following this the five were invited by Miss Pocahontas to spend an afternoon with her, and she had what Maud called a little collation for them in her hotel sitting-room.

Mamma and Auntie had the offer of Cousin Anna Tomlinson's carriage and coachman for this same afternoon, and in order that the young people might be free, they took Miss Boswell the elder for a drive to the cemetery, they being of a mind, and the community with them, that no more seemly spot for innocent recreation and enjoyment might be.

The afternoon and its collation were so delightful, and Miss 'Hontas in a semi-formal afternoon gown was so winning, the guests went home in a state of uplift, with the exception of Amanthus who seemednon-committal. But, as Maud said, charming people are so often resentful of other people being charming.

Selina spoke at home about this attitude from Amanthus. "She seemed ungenerous over our admiration for Miss Pocahontas, Mamma. Right in the middle of the afternoon she wanted to come home. Lovely as she is, she's hard to stand when she acts this way."

"I've never encouraged you to find fault with your friends, Selina," reproved her mother. "No doubt Amanthus had her grounds."

"I haven't a doubt she had," from Auntie. "I've watched Amanthus before. If a thing's true, Lavinia, why shouldn't Selina say it? She'll get along the better for recognizing it. Refusing to admit a fact doesn't make it less so."

"I've always found Amanthus sweetly feminine," said Mamma concisely.

"And there isn't a man won't agree with you," from Auntie. "She's exactly to the pattern of what they look for in women. I found that out before ever Amanthus was born."

"Ann Eliza, I'm astonished at your tone!"

"The tone goes with the rankle that's been in me a good many years, Lavinia."

Selina and her group met with Maud this same evening to talk the afternoon over as was their habit after an occasion. The Addisons were prosperous and their parlors boasted velvet carpets, mirrors overthe mantels, lace curtains stiff with pattern and the seemly rest of what handsome parlors at that day should boast.

Again Amanthus took exception to the enthusiasm over Miss Boswell. Perhaps there was something in the name of the lady that was suggestive of the especial line of attack. "I don't see anything so good-looking about her," she declared. "She's too dark; she looks like an Indian squab."

Amanthus was given to occasional lapses in her words, and while as a rule the others were tolerant with her, this as concerning Miss Boswell was too much.

"Meaning squaw, we are to presume?" said Maud—generous-spirited, whole-souled Maud, scornful of such assets as mere red-brown hair and splendid skin, the emphasis with her being laid on loftier attainments!

"I can't keep you from presuming," returned Amanthus with dignity,herdaffodil yellow head held high, "I said squab."

"But it doesn't mean anything used so," pointed out conscientious Adele.

"Not a thing," corroborated little Juliette.

"You can't prove that it doesn't to me," returned Amanthus, which after all was true. It also was characteristic of Amanthus. It was best to change the subject. Perhaps it was unfortunate that it returned to Miss Boswell.

"It seems to Mamma and to me," said Selina,"that I ought to do something in the way of entertaining for Miss Pocahontas. It's more of an occasion to have it in the evening, of course, but it can't be dancing in our little house, nor music, because we can't depend on our piano any longer."

"You wouldn't want the ordinary thing for her anyway," said Maud promptly and decidedly. "Selina," one saw the sweep as it were of Maudie's unbridled fancy as it mounted, one braced oneself against the oncoming rush of her enthusiasm, "I have the idea!" Did she have it, or was she merely pursuing it unaware of what it would be until she overtook it? "Unless you actually want it, let me ask Mamma if I may give it myself? I should love to. What I say," she had it now, and brought it forth with the pride of ownership, "is a conversazione!"

"But I do want it," Selina hastened to declare, "though," dubiously, "I hadn't thought of attempting anything like that."

Amanthus spoke here and almost crossly. "Mamma says the accustomed thing is nearly always the proper thing. She told me to remember that. I can't see why you're always hunting the unusual thing? I don't know what a conversazione is."

"A conversazione," said Maud loftily, "is a meeting for conversation, preferably on belle-lettres or kindred topics. It's not unlike the French salons."

"I'll speak to Mamma," from Selina still more dubiously, "and if she agrees I'll go and see MissPocahontas. If I do decide on it, will you meet with me and help me plan it?"

"Meet here," said Maud, "and in the mean season I'll look up the subject further."

When Selina went home with her proposal, Mrs. Wistar was more concerned with the obligation than the nature of the entertaining. "Have what you please, Selina, so it's reasonably simple in its cost and we can afford it. I'm glad to have you do it for Miss Boswell."

Auntie demurred. "I like the idea of a party, too," she said, "but why not just a party? What does Selina, or what do the others know about a—— what is it you're proposing to have, Selina? A conversazione? It sounds to me like borrowed finery in another guise such as we let her wear to the musicale. Let's don't do it again, Lavinia. I don't fancy mental furbelows that are not her own any more than dressmaker furbelows. Let Selina give a plain party."

"Why should you want to discourage the child, Ann Eliza? If she and the others want to have a conversational evening. I can see no reasonable grounds for objection."

Accordingly the group met with Maud the next evening and Selina reported. "Mamma approves, but Miss Pocahontas looked a little startled when I said conversazione. Or maybe I imagined she did, for immediately she smiled charmingly and said, 'How very lovely!' Maudie, do you really think we'd better undertake it?"

Having originated an idea, Maud never was known to relinquish it. "Just as you please," largely, "as I said before if you don't want it, let me give it."

Selina surrendered. "You got our literary club at school into that debate with the boys from the high school," she reminded Maud uneasily however, "and what we thought at the time was applause from them, we found out afterward was laughter."

They all moved uneasily at the recollection, all but Amanthus and she had not been in it.

"It was the subject Maud insisted on, we can see that now," said Juliette bitterly, "'Resolved that the works of Alexander Pope are atheistical in their tendency.' We ought to have known they were laughing at us when they accepted it."

"If we're here to help you, Selina," said Maud loftily, "we'd better get about it. There's more than enough of our sex for the evening as it is. I've been reading up and there's very little said about women as guests at either salons or conversaziones. The important thing seems to have been the men."

Amanthus showed more interest at this, but she seemed determined to be trying. "I won't come if you have Tommy Bacon."

Juliette was responsible for this. At the Friday evening dancing club she had burst forth to a group of them, impetuously, "What do you suppose Tommy Bacon here has just said to me? That Maud andSelina and Adele and I are the only girls he knows whose hand he can't hold when he wants to."

In the pause which had followed Amanthus had grown very red. They could not blame her now. Though Tommy measured suddenly against the requirements of a conversazione did seem very young, still his absence would leave them short.

Maud was rising to the demands of the moment again so visibly that her companions as visibly looked uneasy. But her suggestion this time was practical. On the previous Saturday afternoon she and Selina and Adele, out for a walk in the Indian summer briskness had met Culpepper Buxton and his three roommates out for a tramp also. The two groups had joined forces and gone sauntering out the sycamore bordered road that led up-climbing and down-rolling to the old monastery in its secluded and wooded grounds where Louis Phillipe in his exile for a time had stayed. It not only proved a pleasant occasion, the background of the French king lending color and romance to the setting, but it added three masculine acquaintances to the lists of the ladies—Mr. Cannon, easy and talkative, Mr. Welling, provocative and in spectacles, Mr. Tate, tall and studious. Older than their own set, decidedly these three young men were acquisitions.

"You must ask these friends of Culpepper, Selina," proposed Maud. "And do you believe if we coax Culpepper, he'll get Algernon Charles Biggs to come? At a conversazione, after it is understood by Miss Boswell who he is, he will seem to be a card?"

"The two groups had ... gone sauntering out the sycamore bordered road."

"The two groups had ... gone sauntering out the sycamore bordered road."

"The two groups had ... gone sauntering out the sycamore bordered road."

Algy Biggs was a near if collateral kinsman of a very real and great poet on the other side of the English-speaking world, a thing he never was allowed to forget, and which in company rendered him next to mute. Yet he was amazingly big and athletic and good-looking, great in the local militia, in the summer regattas on the river, as a stroke oar on the barge picnic parties, carrying the baskets and luggage, building the fires, fetching water.

"A regular Herculaneum, or whoever it was performed labors and cleaned stables," Amanthus had said of him.

"He won't come if he knows what we want him for," affirmed Selina, decidedly. "I'll try."

Adele here pointed out the flaw in the arrangements, it being her gift from Heaven always to do that.

"But the ones you're naming are nearer our ages. There ought to be somebody more suitable for Miss Boswell."

"Your Cousin Marcus, Selina." said Maud.

Selina felt ashamed of the haste with which she said no for surely it is an unworthy thing to be overly sensitive about your kin, and nobody is any better off as to family than the total average in desirability of its members. Still there was no use running the family in on Miss Boswell if she did not have to.

Aunt Juanita, married to Uncle Bruce, was Mamma's sister, and Cousin Marcus was their son. Aunt Juanita wrote letters to the newspapers on every sort of subject that engrossed her from Schopenhauer to Susan B. Anthony, and made impassioned addresses to women wherever she ran into them, at parties, picnics, church societies, anywhere, like as not having forgotten to take down one curl-paper in dressing her iron-gray hair. The subjects for the addresses varied.

A forerunner, a feminine John Baptist to her day and place and sex, as Selina was one day to come to see her, then Aunt Juanita Bruce, tall, angular, unmended and ungroomed, stood alone in her community, unique in type but none the less absorbed and none the more abashed for that.

As for Uncle Bruce, Mamma called him in as he came by of mornings, with his big bushy-haired head and untidy beard and his mummified and scholarly little trotting body, and brushed him off and tidied him up and retied his old black string cravat, and started him on again. Whereat if he had a book, it being his way to proceed along the streets with his nose and his spectacled eyes within the covers of some abstruse volume, he was as like as not to proceed indefinitely at his little dog-trot speed in whatsoever line started on, the levee and the river, it was said, on more than one occasion bringing him up. Uncle Bruce was a lawyer and Selina was told that he was an authority, but there was small comfort to heryoung and innocent soul in that in the face of his more salient characteristics.

Cousin Marcus, their son, did editorial paragraphs on the newspapers and was clever, but then you never knew what he might be besides, being all of Aunt Juanita and Uncle Bruce and himself together. If he was asked to come at eight he would stroll round at ten, and if one wanted to close the house at twelve, Marcus would produce his cigarettes—he was the only person in town to use them and was looked on askant therefore—and monologue with brilliancy till one. He was a law unto himself and over-rode your laws. Now Selina yearned secretly and passionately, and she feared almost unworthily, to be considered correct and proper, and this, moreover, was an occasion for that charmingly correct person, Miss Pocahontas Boswell. Auntie remembered now, too, just who the Boswells were. She was sure that as a girl she had spent a night at their even then old brick home at Eadston in its setting of quaint garden. Selina was uneasy as it was, over this conversazione business of Maud's, and if the truth be told, always winced at her relatives, the Bruces.

"No," she said, and firmly for once in the face of Maud, "I don't think I want Marcus."

"Then who—-?" began Maud, and stopped. The same thought had occurred at this point, was recurring to each of them, to four of them that is, Amanthus not knowing the person in question this time.

A new assistant rector at Selina's church hadachieved a notable popularity, and of late these friends of hers, with the exception of Amanthus, had been accompanying her to services whenever they could be spared from their own. Perhaps they all blushed a bit now under detection.

"Why not the Reverend Mr. Thomas Wingham if he'll come?" avowed Maud stoutly despite the general abashment. "It's entirely for Miss Boswell we're considering him?"

As yet Selina was the only one who had met the gentlemen, he having called upon her household in the performance of his parochial duties. Driven thus into a corner by Maud, there was no reason why he should not be invited. "I'll ask Mamma," she conceded.

This person approved, and accordingly the invitation to him went the next day in Mamma's lady-like and running hand, upon her visiting card. It was hard to reconcile her being Aunt Juanita's sister, though to be sure they did have different mothers.

To MeetMiss Pocahontas Boswell

The Reverend Mr. Wingham, young and good-looking gentleman that he was, promptly replying that it would be his pleasure to meet Miss Boswell on Friday evening, the affair assumed aspects entirely new, and in a different sense, significant.

Mamma planned the details. The back parlor, so-called, in the Wistar home, really was the dining-room.

"On the evening of your little affair, Selina," she explained, "thanks to the screen which we'll set about the table beforehand, your aunt and I, at the agreed-upon moment, will slip in with coffee, chocolate, sandwiches, and plates of cake. There'll remain only the removing of the screen by your father, to disclose us in our places, I behind the chocolate pitcher, your aunt behind the coffee urn, and the adjournment of your guests to the back parlor. I'm always thankful when an occasion like this comes up, that the Wistar coffee urn isn't plate but silver."

After preparations for the affair thus were well under way, Juliette, dependable if she was such a little creature, rounded up Maud and Selina at the Wistars one afternoon. "It's conversazione, of course, but what're we going to talk about?"

True! One saw Maud rising to the new demands of the situation. "If we'd only thought about it sooner," she mourned. "On our walk with Culpepper and his friends the other day, Mr. Welling that I was with, the square one with spectacles, told me they were deep in a book round at their rooms that they were having daily rows over, Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations.' My uncle has it on his shelves. We might have gotten up on that and showed them."

Amanthus happened in here and they explained the trouble.

"Why not talk in pairs and not trouble about a subject?" she asked hopefully. "Wouldn't it be a conversazione just the same?"

They ignored this whereas they might have said patently tolerant things to her. Amanthus was Amanthus and they must accept her as she was, which meant be magnanimous with her rather than lofty or pitying.

"I'll go round to the school to-morrow," said Maud, "and ask permission to look over the old minutes of our Sappho Literary Club. By looking up our program, I'll happen on some subject of general interest that we're all up on. As soon as you're home from your teaching, Selina, come over and we'll decide."

"Don't count me in on this conversazione," said Amanthus, "I'll come but I won't talk."

True, as she had said once before, lovely creature that she was, sunny-haired, violet of eyes, coral-lipped, she had no need for conversation, no, nor yet wit, nor repartee, in her business of life.

It almost would seem that Auntie agreed with Amanthus. "Selina's quite pretty enough, Lavinia, to do without this foolishness," she insisted. "It isn't on account of any brains she's got, or any she'll come to have, for example, that Culpepper comes round here. Selina's pretty and sweet and she looks up to him. So far as he and any other men she's likely to meet go, what on earth more do they want in her? I'm an old maid but I know."

CHAPTER TENIt was the evening of the conversazione. Selina, dear child, as Auntie called her, pretty and flushed and frankly excited, wore the discredited graduation dress, furbished up once more by Mamma, and yet once more pressed by Aunt Viney."Never, never again do we let her wear garments not her own," said Mamma as Selina went down to welcome those first arrivals, the friends of her youth."Thanks be, Lavinia, for that," said Auntie. "Maybe you'll come around to my view of the mental furbelows next."When Selina reached her friends below, she found Amanthus in yellow. With a pretty mother who dressed well herself Amanthus always had charming clothes. The corn-colored knotted sash and ribbons worn by her to-night were the color of her abundant hair, and her fan of yellow feathers seemed planned to open against her red lower lip while her face dimpled and sparkled above it.It was handsome Maud's self one saw, animated and sure and leading. You hardly thought about, if you noted at all, her val-edged flounces and her string of beads, though you did rejoice in her clearwhite and red skin and her red-brown hair. Auntie said, you felt the courage and vigor of Maud's Presbyterian forebears in her straightforwardness if she did belie them in her impulsiveness.Pretty Juliette's cheeks subdued her cherry ribbons, little gypsy thing, and Adele's throat rose soft and white from her round-necked blue cashmere. As for Miss Pocahontas Boswell who arrived here—but how put into words that simplicity which is not simplicity at all, about her amber draperies? Or how make plain the appreciation and interest in her smiling eyes?Mrs. William Williams, hearing of the occasion, had sent Selina a box of hot-house flowers, half a dozen kinds at least laid on a bedding of wet smilax, the endeavor in those days being for variety and assemblage of colors. Combined with the smilax the whole made a mixed bowlful for the table between the lace curtains of the two windows and, so Selina felt, lent a riotous air of preparation and festivity to the parlors.And now the remainder of the guests came, or seemed to come, at once. Papa out in the hall, was shaking hands and exchanging little sallies and seeing to the disposition of coats and hats, after which, having sent, seen and brought the arrivals to the last one in, he went back to his paper in the next room.It was restoring to a hostess' anxious spirits now the actual moment was come, to enumerate these arrivals in greeting them and in presenting them toMiss Boswell. What can be more to the credit of a hostess than an excess of the other sex?Here were Bliss and Brent and Sam of their own set. But can it be that familiarity in the long run does breed—well, an uncompromising eye? For Bliss and Brent and Sam looked—it was the dismaying truth—they looked young! They acted young, too, falling back the one against the other at the parlor door, and reddening as they took the hand of the guest as if they did not know what to do with it! And pretty Bliss, rather spoiled on that account if the truth be told, with his ruddy hair and his rosy checks, to have put on a pink neck-tie!Culpepper and his friends arriving just here, made a gratifying and convincing show: Mr. Cannon, alert and good-looking, enlivened by a white vest; Mr. Tate, tall and decorous; Mr. Welling, square-set and in spectacles. These with Culpepper were a force in themselves.Bringing up the close came first the Reverend Mr. Wingham. Was it his high vest or his high calling that gave the distinctive quality to his good looks? And lastly came Algernon Charles Biggs, Culpepper evidently on the lookout for him.Algy was fearfully gloomy. As the company sat down he took his chair with a furtive unwillingness, Culpepper seating himself near him almost as if by intention.With this exception, Selina felt, everything was quitecomme il faut, as Maude loved to say of anoccasion, and even impressive and needless to say, gratifying. Everybody sat around, the open grate the center, so to speak, the firelight flickering on Auntie's especially burnished fender and coal-bucket and fire-irons.By the connivance of the four, Selina, Juliette, Maud and Adele, Mr. Wingham was seated next Miss Boswell. He had shown brisk pleasure on being presented to tall and dashing Maud and seemed willing to linger and parry sallies with her; he had warmed, everybody warmed to Juliette; while within the minute he was taking issue on some general proposition with Adele. But these introductory passages over, they passed him on to his place for the evening.Bliss, pretty, pouty boy, on whom Amanthus had been smiling since she dismissed Tommy, was sulky because she, from some perversity, was off to herself in an unillumined spot as it were, between the bookcase and the door. Yet she illumined it; she was a lovely creature."'Like sunshine in a shady spot,'" Selina and Adele who were near together heard Miss Boswell say to Mr. Wingham, and his attention thus directed to Amanthus, he heartily agreed.Then Selina charmingly flushed beneath the crown of her fair hair, could she but have known it, and prettily anxious, became aware that Maud had coughed, was coughing again. It was the signal agreed upon. There came a rushing as of the seasin her ears, a sinking in the pit of her person. Had they allowed Maud to coerce them into something ill-advised again? Was Auntie right? Were they about to make themselves preposterous and ridiculous? And what had Culpepper said—Culpepper there across the circle next to Algy? That girls played at having a knowledge that men had? Was he laughing at them now with that same look of lenient enjoyment in his bold blue eyes that he usually gave to Auntie? Tears almost of anger were in her eyes.Not at all! She had had these hideous moments preceding the actual plunge before, precursors always to the later joys of triumph. As, for example, when she used to lead in the debate at The Sappho, and at call for her secretarial report at the junior missionary society, and again at the moment of her figuring at her graduation. Surely she knew them for what they were now!Maud had given definite instructions beforehand. "Let your start seem casual, Selina, the mere off-throw from passing reflections."And, recalling this and drawing a restoring breath of confidence, Selina spoke to the circle of her guests, endeavoring to convey ease along with the proposition which was to furnish subject and substance for the conversazione, in a voice which would not be quite steady."But is there not a denial of the truth that the moral is necessarily part with the beautiful, in suchphrases as 'art for art's sake,' 'beauty for the sake of beauty'? So Selina."Maud, as per arrangement and program, came sweepingly to the retort direct, which she had taken from a volume belonging to The Sappho's library, called "Prepared Debates." As she had pointed out, there's nothing like getting the requisite impetus at the start!"The moral changes with the times, the place and the peoples. Art is as fixed as the gulf between itself and the ethical obligation is wide."Juliette, with cheeks afire, rushed gallantly in, also as prearranged by Maud, she being scheduled to be off-hand, playful and staccato. She was to fling the proposition on at this point to one of the guests, having been instructed which one:"If eyes were made for seeing,Then beauty is its own excuse for being,"said she gayly and insouciantly. "Isn't it so, er—Mr. Wingham?"That very good-looking and well-set-up young clergyman across the circle next to Miss Boswell, started ever so slightly at this call upon him by name. He had been looking at Amanthus, lovely creature, who needed neither vocabulary nor repartee either, in her business of life!"It is," he agreed a little hastily; then gathering himself smilingly together he said heartily, "It iseminently and conclusively its own excuse and justification."This coming from Mr. Wingham was a bit dismaying, as from the nature of his cloth and calling, he had been counted on to take the moral issue up at this point. It brought matters to an unprepared-for pause."The Puritan—" hurriedly began conscientious Adele, but with a glance at Maud, stopped. The Puritan, as taken from "Prepared Debates," was to follow in logical sequence after the support and exposition of the moral by Mr. Wingham. Adele swallowed, and withdrew.Whereupon support for the moral came from the other side of the circle, from Culpepper nobly and by no sort of prearrangement either. One could wish he would show more conviction and less jocularity about it, however. The progenitors of this evening's business were of no mind by now to be played with. Two of the friends of Culpepper, also, Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon, would bear looking after. Their markedly polite attention almost would seem to cover ecstacy and enjoyment."In the ideals of that great old people, the Greeks," queried Culpepper jocularly, "somehow I seem to recall that the symmetry of the human body was the expression of the symmetry of the inner soul?"Mr. Welling, he of the square person, resettled his spectacles. "As for example, Aesop? Or shall we say Socrates?"Mr. Cannon of the white vest burbled, then coughed to cover his defection."The Puritan—" here ventured in Adele again, with an eye as to its being proper business on Maud, who frowned darkly, whereupon Adele, flushed but obedient again withdrew.Tall Mr. Tate, the third of the friends of Culpepper, had looked across each time at Adele's remark twice ventured and twice withdrawn. With the exceptions of these glances in her direction, he like Mr. Wingham, had been looking at Amanthus. Even so, something of what Maud called scholastic earnestness sat upon Mr. Tate, and he was disposed, too, to treat the evening with gratifying sincerity. There was that in the subject twice introduced and twice withdrawn by the young lady in blue as he afterward designated Adele, which evidently appealed to him to the momentary eclipsing of Amanthus' charms."The Puritan—" he took the suggestion up the least bit sententiously and with courteous acknowledgment toward the source of its origin, "that great timely force for moral power which is moral beauty, was——"Mr. Cannon indisputably naughty by this time, pulled down his white vest and wickedly concluded the sentence—"'was at once known from other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the up-turned whites to his eyes'—how does the rest of the paragraph go, Welling?" Whichwas not in the least what Mr. Tate nor yet Adele had in mind to say.But even so, was not this the mounting joy of wit? Of give and take? Of stimulation? This the hitherto imagined delight of social intercourse?So Selina. But a hostess must keep a hostess' wit and head! Everyone must be won and led to speak! But wait, Miss Boswell, and smiling as with one lending herself prettily to the moment, is talking:"In speaking of beauty perhaps we're thinking a bit too much of the quality in an object which in regarding it excites pleasing emotions? Surely we're to believe that the terms of beauty apply to qualities that arouse admiration and approval. I for one shall insist on there being intellectual and moral beauty—and beauty of goodness and utility. But if I understand just right, Mr. Biggs here is far better qualified to define beauty than the rest of us. And with a great poet's authority behind him, too!"Big, handsome, gloomy Algy nearly fell over with his chair which at the moment he was uneasily balancing on one leg as some perception of what he was in dawned on him."I—Oh say now, any of 'em will tell you I've never read a word of him in my life. Never could find the hitch—er—don't you know, between the words and the sense. Quit it, will you, Culpepper, kicking me?""'A thing of beauty is a joy forever!'" gayly chanted dependable little Juliette who true to theprogram was to throw herself and her munitions into breaches as needed."'Handsome is as handsome does,'" suddenly observed Bliss, very young and passing bitter, with an obviousness patent to those who understood the evening's coolness between him and Amanthus, "'Beauty is only skin deep.'" Could it be that Bliss had noted the glances of two of the company, Mr. Wingham and Mr. Tate, fixed upon Amanthus even now?"And yet," it was the first spontaneous contribution to the evening from the Reverend Mr. Wingham, his gaze returning from that retired corner where it had been drawn again and again, "the eternal youth of the beautiful!" Certainly Amanthus did not need vocabulary or repartee in the least!Adele with new courage, and this time at a signal from Maud, began again: "The Puritan through his great exponent——"The doorbell rang. Kind conventions!Comme il faut!Had Selina really been congratulating herself in these gratifying terms?It was Cousin Marcus Bruce; she recognized his voice as Papa let him in.

It was the evening of the conversazione. Selina, dear child, as Auntie called her, pretty and flushed and frankly excited, wore the discredited graduation dress, furbished up once more by Mamma, and yet once more pressed by Aunt Viney.

"Never, never again do we let her wear garments not her own," said Mamma as Selina went down to welcome those first arrivals, the friends of her youth.

"Thanks be, Lavinia, for that," said Auntie. "Maybe you'll come around to my view of the mental furbelows next."

When Selina reached her friends below, she found Amanthus in yellow. With a pretty mother who dressed well herself Amanthus always had charming clothes. The corn-colored knotted sash and ribbons worn by her to-night were the color of her abundant hair, and her fan of yellow feathers seemed planned to open against her red lower lip while her face dimpled and sparkled above it.

It was handsome Maud's self one saw, animated and sure and leading. You hardly thought about, if you noted at all, her val-edged flounces and her string of beads, though you did rejoice in her clearwhite and red skin and her red-brown hair. Auntie said, you felt the courage and vigor of Maud's Presbyterian forebears in her straightforwardness if she did belie them in her impulsiveness.

Pretty Juliette's cheeks subdued her cherry ribbons, little gypsy thing, and Adele's throat rose soft and white from her round-necked blue cashmere. As for Miss Pocahontas Boswell who arrived here—but how put into words that simplicity which is not simplicity at all, about her amber draperies? Or how make plain the appreciation and interest in her smiling eyes?

Mrs. William Williams, hearing of the occasion, had sent Selina a box of hot-house flowers, half a dozen kinds at least laid on a bedding of wet smilax, the endeavor in those days being for variety and assemblage of colors. Combined with the smilax the whole made a mixed bowlful for the table between the lace curtains of the two windows and, so Selina felt, lent a riotous air of preparation and festivity to the parlors.

And now the remainder of the guests came, or seemed to come, at once. Papa out in the hall, was shaking hands and exchanging little sallies and seeing to the disposition of coats and hats, after which, having sent, seen and brought the arrivals to the last one in, he went back to his paper in the next room.

It was restoring to a hostess' anxious spirits now the actual moment was come, to enumerate these arrivals in greeting them and in presenting them toMiss Boswell. What can be more to the credit of a hostess than an excess of the other sex?

Here were Bliss and Brent and Sam of their own set. But can it be that familiarity in the long run does breed—well, an uncompromising eye? For Bliss and Brent and Sam looked—it was the dismaying truth—they looked young! They acted young, too, falling back the one against the other at the parlor door, and reddening as they took the hand of the guest as if they did not know what to do with it! And pretty Bliss, rather spoiled on that account if the truth be told, with his ruddy hair and his rosy checks, to have put on a pink neck-tie!

Culpepper and his friends arriving just here, made a gratifying and convincing show: Mr. Cannon, alert and good-looking, enlivened by a white vest; Mr. Tate, tall and decorous; Mr. Welling, square-set and in spectacles. These with Culpepper were a force in themselves.

Bringing up the close came first the Reverend Mr. Wingham. Was it his high vest or his high calling that gave the distinctive quality to his good looks? And lastly came Algernon Charles Biggs, Culpepper evidently on the lookout for him.

Algy was fearfully gloomy. As the company sat down he took his chair with a furtive unwillingness, Culpepper seating himself near him almost as if by intention.

With this exception, Selina felt, everything was quitecomme il faut, as Maude loved to say of anoccasion, and even impressive and needless to say, gratifying. Everybody sat around, the open grate the center, so to speak, the firelight flickering on Auntie's especially burnished fender and coal-bucket and fire-irons.

By the connivance of the four, Selina, Juliette, Maud and Adele, Mr. Wingham was seated next Miss Boswell. He had shown brisk pleasure on being presented to tall and dashing Maud and seemed willing to linger and parry sallies with her; he had warmed, everybody warmed to Juliette; while within the minute he was taking issue on some general proposition with Adele. But these introductory passages over, they passed him on to his place for the evening.

Bliss, pretty, pouty boy, on whom Amanthus had been smiling since she dismissed Tommy, was sulky because she, from some perversity, was off to herself in an unillumined spot as it were, between the bookcase and the door. Yet she illumined it; she was a lovely creature.

"'Like sunshine in a shady spot,'" Selina and Adele who were near together heard Miss Boswell say to Mr. Wingham, and his attention thus directed to Amanthus, he heartily agreed.

Then Selina charmingly flushed beneath the crown of her fair hair, could she but have known it, and prettily anxious, became aware that Maud had coughed, was coughing again. It was the signal agreed upon. There came a rushing as of the seasin her ears, a sinking in the pit of her person. Had they allowed Maud to coerce them into something ill-advised again? Was Auntie right? Were they about to make themselves preposterous and ridiculous? And what had Culpepper said—Culpepper there across the circle next to Algy? That girls played at having a knowledge that men had? Was he laughing at them now with that same look of lenient enjoyment in his bold blue eyes that he usually gave to Auntie? Tears almost of anger were in her eyes.

Not at all! She had had these hideous moments preceding the actual plunge before, precursors always to the later joys of triumph. As, for example, when she used to lead in the debate at The Sappho, and at call for her secretarial report at the junior missionary society, and again at the moment of her figuring at her graduation. Surely she knew them for what they were now!

Maud had given definite instructions beforehand. "Let your start seem casual, Selina, the mere off-throw from passing reflections."

And, recalling this and drawing a restoring breath of confidence, Selina spoke to the circle of her guests, endeavoring to convey ease along with the proposition which was to furnish subject and substance for the conversazione, in a voice which would not be quite steady.

"But is there not a denial of the truth that the moral is necessarily part with the beautiful, in suchphrases as 'art for art's sake,' 'beauty for the sake of beauty'? So Selina."

Maud, as per arrangement and program, came sweepingly to the retort direct, which she had taken from a volume belonging to The Sappho's library, called "Prepared Debates." As she had pointed out, there's nothing like getting the requisite impetus at the start!

"The moral changes with the times, the place and the peoples. Art is as fixed as the gulf between itself and the ethical obligation is wide."

Juliette, with cheeks afire, rushed gallantly in, also as prearranged by Maud, she being scheduled to be off-hand, playful and staccato. She was to fling the proposition on at this point to one of the guests, having been instructed which one:

"If eyes were made for seeing,Then beauty is its own excuse for being,"

said she gayly and insouciantly. "Isn't it so, er—Mr. Wingham?"

That very good-looking and well-set-up young clergyman across the circle next to Miss Boswell, started ever so slightly at this call upon him by name. He had been looking at Amanthus, lovely creature, who needed neither vocabulary nor repartee either, in her business of life!

"It is," he agreed a little hastily; then gathering himself smilingly together he said heartily, "It iseminently and conclusively its own excuse and justification."

This coming from Mr. Wingham was a bit dismaying, as from the nature of his cloth and calling, he had been counted on to take the moral issue up at this point. It brought matters to an unprepared-for pause.

"The Puritan—" hurriedly began conscientious Adele, but with a glance at Maud, stopped. The Puritan, as taken from "Prepared Debates," was to follow in logical sequence after the support and exposition of the moral by Mr. Wingham. Adele swallowed, and withdrew.

Whereupon support for the moral came from the other side of the circle, from Culpepper nobly and by no sort of prearrangement either. One could wish he would show more conviction and less jocularity about it, however. The progenitors of this evening's business were of no mind by now to be played with. Two of the friends of Culpepper, also, Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon, would bear looking after. Their markedly polite attention almost would seem to cover ecstacy and enjoyment.

"In the ideals of that great old people, the Greeks," queried Culpepper jocularly, "somehow I seem to recall that the symmetry of the human body was the expression of the symmetry of the inner soul?"

Mr. Welling, he of the square person, resettled his spectacles. "As for example, Aesop? Or shall we say Socrates?"

Mr. Cannon of the white vest burbled, then coughed to cover his defection.

"The Puritan—" here ventured in Adele again, with an eye as to its being proper business on Maud, who frowned darkly, whereupon Adele, flushed but obedient again withdrew.

Tall Mr. Tate, the third of the friends of Culpepper, had looked across each time at Adele's remark twice ventured and twice withdrawn. With the exceptions of these glances in her direction, he like Mr. Wingham, had been looking at Amanthus. Even so, something of what Maud called scholastic earnestness sat upon Mr. Tate, and he was disposed, too, to treat the evening with gratifying sincerity. There was that in the subject twice introduced and twice withdrawn by the young lady in blue as he afterward designated Adele, which evidently appealed to him to the momentary eclipsing of Amanthus' charms.

"The Puritan—" he took the suggestion up the least bit sententiously and with courteous acknowledgment toward the source of its origin, "that great timely force for moral power which is moral beauty, was——"

Mr. Cannon indisputably naughty by this time, pulled down his white vest and wickedly concluded the sentence—"'was at once known from other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the up-turned whites to his eyes'—how does the rest of the paragraph go, Welling?" Whichwas not in the least what Mr. Tate nor yet Adele had in mind to say.

But even so, was not this the mounting joy of wit? Of give and take? Of stimulation? This the hitherto imagined delight of social intercourse?

So Selina. But a hostess must keep a hostess' wit and head! Everyone must be won and led to speak! But wait, Miss Boswell, and smiling as with one lending herself prettily to the moment, is talking:

"In speaking of beauty perhaps we're thinking a bit too much of the quality in an object which in regarding it excites pleasing emotions? Surely we're to believe that the terms of beauty apply to qualities that arouse admiration and approval. I for one shall insist on there being intellectual and moral beauty—and beauty of goodness and utility. But if I understand just right, Mr. Biggs here is far better qualified to define beauty than the rest of us. And with a great poet's authority behind him, too!"

Big, handsome, gloomy Algy nearly fell over with his chair which at the moment he was uneasily balancing on one leg as some perception of what he was in dawned on him.

"I—Oh say now, any of 'em will tell you I've never read a word of him in my life. Never could find the hitch—er—don't you know, between the words and the sense. Quit it, will you, Culpepper, kicking me?"

"'A thing of beauty is a joy forever!'" gayly chanted dependable little Juliette who true to theprogram was to throw herself and her munitions into breaches as needed.

"'Handsome is as handsome does,'" suddenly observed Bliss, very young and passing bitter, with an obviousness patent to those who understood the evening's coolness between him and Amanthus, "'Beauty is only skin deep.'" Could it be that Bliss had noted the glances of two of the company, Mr. Wingham and Mr. Tate, fixed upon Amanthus even now?

"And yet," it was the first spontaneous contribution to the evening from the Reverend Mr. Wingham, his gaze returning from that retired corner where it had been drawn again and again, "the eternal youth of the beautiful!" Certainly Amanthus did not need vocabulary or repartee in the least!

Adele with new courage, and this time at a signal from Maud, began again: "The Puritan through his great exponent——"

The doorbell rang. Kind conventions!Comme il faut!Had Selina really been congratulating herself in these gratifying terms?

It was Cousin Marcus Bruce; she recognized his voice as Papa let him in.

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