in one of those quick reflections that so often visited her ready-made,
"that turns the merely inquiring mind away. Nothing but feeling could
hold it."

Miss Filbert made the conventional effort to rise, but it came to
nothing, or to a mere embarrassed accent of their greeting. Then her
voice showed this feeling to be superficial, made nothing of it, pushed
it to one side.

"I suppose you cannot see the foolishness of your pity," she said. "Oh
Miss Howe, I am happier than you are--much happier." Her bare feet, as
she spoke, nestled into the coarse Mirzapore rug on the floor, and her
eye lingered approvingly upon an Owari vase three feet high, and thick
with the gilded landscape of Japan, which stood near it, in the cheap
magnificence of the room.

Hilda smiled. Her smile acquiesced in the world she had found,
acquiesced, with the gladness of an explorer, in Laura Filbert as a
feature of it.

"Don't be too sure," she cried; "I am very happy. It is such a pleasure
to see you."

Her gaze embraced Miss Filbert as a person, and Miss Filbert as a
pictorial fact, but that was because she could not help it. Her eyes
were really engaged only with the latter Miss Filbert.

"Much happier than you are," Laura repeated, slowly moving her head from
side to side as if to negative contradiction in advance. She smiled too;
it was as if she had remembered a former habit, from politeness.