curiosity by delaying to remark that Mrs. Ambient hated her sister-
in-law. This I learned but later on, when other matters came to my
knowledge. I mention it, however, at once, for I shall perhaps not
seem to count too much on having beguiled him if I say he must
promptly have guessed it. Mrs. Ambient, a person of conscience, put
the best face on her kinswoman, who spent a month with her twice a
year; but it took no great insight to recognise the very different
personal paste of the two ladies, and that the usual feminine
hypocrisies would cost them on either side much more than the usual
effort. Mrs. Ambient, smooth-haired, thin-lipped, perpetually fresh,
must have regarded her crumpled and dishevelled visitor as an
equivocal joke; she herself so the opposite of a Rossetti, she
herself a Reynolds or a Lawrence, with no more far-fetched note in
her composition than a cold ladylike candour and a well-starched
muslin dress.

It was in a garment and with an expression of this kind that she made
her entrance after I had exchanged a few words with Miss Ambient.
Her husband presently followed her and, there being no other company,
we went to dinner. The impressions I received at that repast are
present to me still. The elements of oddity in the air hovered, as
it were, without descending--to any immediate check of my delight.
This came mainly, of course, from Ambient's talk, the easiest and
richest I had ever heard. I mayn't say to-day whether he laid
himself out to dazzle a rather juvenile pilgrim from over the sea;
but that matters little--it seemed so natural to him to shine. His
spoken wit or wisdom, or whatever, had thus a charm almost beyond his
written; that is if the high finish of his printed prose be really,
as some people have maintained, a fault. There was such a kindness
in him, however, that I've no doubt it gave him ideas for me, or