virtues. All this time, I beg to point out, Aunt Pattie, that you have
still told us nothing about the young lady--except something about her
clothes, which doesn't matter.'

Mrs. Burgoyne's amused gesture showed the woman's view of this remark. Miss
Manisty looked puzzled.

'Well--I don't know. Yes--I have told you a great deal. The Lewinsons
apparently thought her rather strange. Adele said she couldn't tell what to
be at with her--you never knew what she would like or dislike. Tom Lewinson
seems to have liked her better than Adele did. He said "there was no
nonsense about her--and she never kept a fellow waiting." Adele says she
is the oddest mixture of knowledge and ignorance. She would ask the most
absurd elementary questions--and then one morning Tom found out that she
was quite a Latin scholar, and had read Horace and Virgil, and all the
rest.'

'Good God!' said Manisty under his breath, resuming his walk.

'And when they asked her to play, she played--quite respectably.'

'Of course:--two hours' practising in the morning,--I foresaw it,' said
Manisty, stopping short. 'Eleanor, we have been like children sporting over
the abyss!'

Mrs. Burgoyne rose with a laugh--a very soft and charming laugh--by no
means the least among the various gifts with which nature had endowed her.

'Oh, civilisation has resources,' she said--'Aunt Pattie and I will take
care of you. Now we have got a quarter of an hour to dress in. Only