own temerity in staying so long. "Should you be opposed
to it?"

"Oh, I shouldn't be _opposed_ to it exactly. I won't say
I don't expect it. I think she might do better, myself;
but I dare say matrimony will swallow her up as it does
everybody--almost everybody--else." A finer ear than Miss
Kimpsey's might have heard in this that to overcome Mrs.
Bell's objections matrimony must take a very attractive
form indeed, and that she had no doubt it would. Elfrida's
instructress did not hear it; she might have been less
overcome with the quality of these latter-day sentiments
if she had. Little Miss Kimpsey, whom matrimony had not
swallowed up, had risen to go. "Oh, I'm sure the most
gifted couldn't do _better_!" she said, hardily, in
departing, with a blush that turned her from buff-and-gray
to brick color.

Mrs. Bell picked up the _Revue_ after she had gone, and
read three lines of a paper on the climate and the soil
of Poland. Then she laid it down again at the same angle
with the corner of the table which it had described
before.

"Rousseau!" she said aloud to herself. "_C'est un peu
fort mais--_" and paused, probably for maturer reflection
upon the end of her sentence.