Franklin Kane

leaving her alone in Paris for a week's shopping, and there was no one else to look after her. She brought her fruit and flowers and sat with her in all her spare

it was because she really found it pleasant to talk and be talked to, or whether, since she had nothing better to do, she merely showed good manners. Althea was sensitive to every shade in manners, and was sure that Miss Buchanan, however great her tact might be, did not find her a bore; yet she could not be at all sure that she found her interesting, and this disconcerted her. Sometimes the suspicion of it made her feel humble, and sometimes it made her feel a little angry, for she was not accustomed to being found uninteresting. She herself, however, was interested; and it was when she most frankly owned to this, laying both anger and humility aside, that she was happiest in the presence of her new acquaintance. She liked to talk to her, and she liked to make her talk. From these c

e remonstrance necessary. Miss Buchanan said no, she supposed not; i

igel had to marry money,' was all she said. 'He couldn't have kept the place going if he hadn't. Jessie isn't at all a bad sort, and t

e had gathered that the widowed Mrs. Buchanan was very pretty and very selfish, but she was h

rowdy people, and Mamma knows such dreadful bounders. So long as people have

was ruthless about all her relatives; there were few of them, apparently, that she cared for except the English cousins with whom she had spent many years of girlh

psed, Helen should be sure of the same modest sum. 'Owing to Aunt Grizel I'll just not starve,' said Helen, with the faint grimace, half bitter, half comic, that sometimes made her s

her annual three thousa

ated helplessly. 'Do you mean tha

ing out of it, as well as buy my clothes. And it will have to pay for my rent and food besides, when Aunt

u will marry,' said Al

flow of lace and silk. Nothing less exposed to the gross chances of the world could be imagined. She did not turn her e

ve-and not merely exist-

ful woman-for so she termed Helen Buchanan-might be forced, not only to hope for marriage, but to seek it; the implication that urgency lay rather in the w

d with warmth. 'I'm sure you have dozen

h she found this idea amusing. 'Why, in heaven's name, sh

y, so charming, s

And, still smiling, her eyes dwelling on Althea with their indifferen

person. She might not be as lovely as her friend-though she might be; that wasn't a matter for her to inquire

oint were to be maintained; and, indeed, could not one deem him delightful, in some senses-in moral senses; he surely was delightfully good. The little effort to see dear Franklin's goodness as delightful rather discomposed her, and

ure you don't mean that you

alf pensively upon her. 'Of course, if he were very n

arry a man unless you

and love so often doesn't.' Helen

to hear you speak like that. I can't bear to think of any one so lovely doing anythi

slightly confused. 'It's very nice of you to mind,' she said; and she added,

unhappy?' Poor Althea gazed, f

poor creature, quite ordinary and gr

de probably remained in Miss Buchanan's memory as something rather puzzling as well as rather pitifu

Pleasantly as she might listen, it was sometimes, Althea had discovered, with a restive air masked by a pervasive vagueness; this vagueness usually drifted over her when Althea described experiences of an intellectual or ?sthetic nature. It could be no question of evasion, however, when, in answer to a question of Althea's, she said that she hated Paris. Since girlhood Althea had accepted Paris as the fi

'I do like to look at it sometimes

like? The French haven't our standards of morality, of course, but

hat she had meant, and said presently that perhaps it was the women's faces-the well-dressed women. 'I don't mind the poor ones so much; they often look too sharp, but they often look kind and frightfully tired. It i

erant, to see only people's faces in Paris. Think of the Salon Carrée and the C

urred. 'Oh, I think I c

hat she liked having them about her, not having to go and look at them. 'It is so stuffy in museums, too; they always g

med to cut into her own tastes and show her suddenly that she did not really like what she had thought she liked, or that she liked what she had hardly before been aware of. All that Helen could be brought to define was that she liked looking at things in the country: at birds, clouds, and flowers

y, was the sheaf of friends in England of whom she had thought wi

or all too certain types. Althea felt that she had carried on the tradition worthily. The lorgnette would have passed all her more recent friends-those made with only its inspiration as a guide. She was as careful as her mother as to whom she admitted to her acquaintanceship, eschewing in particular those of her compatriots whose accents or demeanour betrayed them to her trained discrimination as outside the radius of acceptance. But Althea's kindness of heart was even deeper than her caution, and much as she dreaded becoming involved with the wrong sort of peop

of British social safety. Lady Blair was an old friend of her mother's, and, with Miss Buckston, was her nearest English friend. She also felt safe on the lawn under the mulberry-tree at Grimshaw Rectory, and whe

ew standards. They were not drastic and relegating, like those of Lady Blair's; they did not make her feel unsafe a

indifference and this security went the further fact that she had, probably, never been ingenuous. With all her admiration, her affection for her new friend, this sense of the change that she was working in her life sometimes made Althea a little afraid of her, and somet

ea felt afraid of her. In all circumstances, she more and more clearly saw it, Miss Buchanan would impose her own standards, and be oppressed or enlightened by none. Althea had always thought of herself as v

ague and, evidently, not a pleasant impression of her. Lady Blair she had never heard of, nor the inmates of Grimshaw Rectory. The Collings were also blanks, exc

w a great many peo

sick of them, don't you think? But perhaps your people are more interesting than

mpression that though Miss Buchanan might be sick o