generosity. I have come for the mutton!'"

Thus was Captain Laura Filbert superseded, as doubtless often before, by
an orthodox consideration. Duff Lindsay drove away in his cart; and
still, for an appreciable number of seconds, Miss Howe stood leaning
over the bannisters, her eyes fixed full of speculation on the place
where he had stood. She was thinking of a scene--a dinner with an
Archdeacon--and of the permanent satisfaction to be got from it; and she
renounced almost with a palpable sigh the idea of the Archdeacon's
asking her.




CHAPTER II.


"Oh, her gift!" said Alicia Livingstone. "It is the lowest, isn't it--in
the scale of human endowment? Mimicry."

Miss Livingstone handed her brother his tea as she spoke, but turned her
eyes and her delicate chin toward Duff Lindsay with the protest.
Lindsay's cup was at his lips, and his eyebrows went up over it as if
they would answer before his voice was set at liberty.

"Mimicry isn't a fair word," he said. "The mimic doesn't interpret. He's
a mere thief of expression. You can always see him behind his stolen
mask. The actress takes a different rank. This one does, anyway."

"You're mixing her up with the apes and the monkeys," remarked