with it — "you don't talk. The gravity of Miss Ringgan's face
casts a gloom over the brightness of the evening. I couldn't
conceive what made me feel chilly in the other room till I
looked about and found that the shade came from this corner;
and Mr. Thorn's teeth, I saw, were chattering."

"Constance," said Fleda, laughing and vexed, and making the
reproof more strongly with her eyes — "how can you talk so?"

"Mrs. Thorn, isn't it true?"

Mrs. Thorn's look at Fleda was the essence of good humour.

"Will you let Lewis come and take you a good long ride to-
morrow?"

"No, Mrs. Thorn, I believe not — I intend to stay
perseveringly at home to-morrow, and see if it is possible to
be quiet a day in New York."

"But you will go with me to the concert to-morrow night? —
both of you — and hear Truffi; — come to my house and take
tea, and go from there? will you, Constance?"

"My dear Mrs. Thorn," said Constance, "I shall be in
ecstasies, and Miss Ringgan was privately imploring me last
night to find some way of getting her to it. We regard such
material pleasures as tea and muffins with great indifference,
but when you look up after swallowing your last cup you will
see Miss Ringgan and Miss Evelyn, cloaked and hooded,