Fifty-third Street, seemed to exult in her condition as in a bold
escape. She was short and solid, and her claim to figure was
questioned, but she was conceded presence, though not majesty;
she had moreover, as people said, improved since her marriage,
and the two things in life of which she was most distinctly
conscious were her husband's force in argument and her sister
Isabel's originality. "I've never kept up with Isabel--it would
have taken all my time," she had often remarked; in spite of
which, however, she held her rather wistfully in sight; watching
her as a motherly spaniel might watch a free greyhound. "I want
to see her safely married--that's what I want to see," she
frequently noted to her husband.

"Well, I must say I should have no particular desire to marry
her," Edmund Ludlow was accustomed to answer in an extremely
audible tone.

"I know you say that for argument; you always take the opposite
ground. I don't see what you've against her except that she's so
original."

"Well, I don't like originals; I like translations," Mr. Ludlow
had more than once replied. "Isabel's written in a foreign
tongue. I can't make her out. She ought to marry an Armenian or a
Portuguese."

"That's just what I'm afraid she'll do!" cried Lilian, who
thought Isabel capable of anything.

She listened with great interest to the girl's account of Mrs.