sentimental eyes, all nerves, the product, perhaps, of a fashionable
school, who in one season in New York, her first, had utterly broken down
into what is called nervous prostration. In striking contrast was Miss
Nettie Sumner, perhaps twenty-one, who corresponded more nearly to what
the internationalists call the American type; had evidently taken school
education as a duck takes water, and danced along in society into
apparent robustness of person and knowledge of the world. A handsome
girl, she would be a comely woman, good-natured, quick at repartee,
confining her knowledge of books to popular novels, too natural and frank
to be a flirt, an adept in all the nice slang current in fashionable
life, caught up from collegians and brokers, accustomed to meet men in
public life, in hotels, a very "jolly" companion, with a fund of good
sense that made her entirely capable of managing her own affairs. Mr.
King was at the moment conversing with still another young lady, who had
more years than the last-named-short, compact figure, round girlish face,
good, strong, dark eyes, modest in bearing, self-possessed in manner,
sensible-who made ready and incisive comments, and seemed to have thought
deeply on a large range of topics, but had a sort of downright
practicality and cool independence, with all her femininity of bearing,
that rather, puzzled her interlocutor. It occurred to Mr. King to guess
that Miss Selina Morton might be from Boston, which she was not, but it
was with a sort of shock of surprise that he learned later that this
young girl, moving about in society in the innocent panoply of girlhood,
was a young doctor, who had no doubt looked through and through him with
her keen eyes, studied him in the light of heredity, constitutional
tendencies, habits, and environment, as a possible patient. It almost
made him ill to think of it. Here were types enough for one morning; but
there was still another.

The artist had seated himself on a rock a little distance from the house,