“Peter, she is a nice, a clever, a delightful girl,” said Mary Apswith.

Mrs. Apswith sat in a bright little salon overlooking the Rue de la Paix. For her holiday week of shopping Peter’s hotel was not central enough, but Peter himself was at her command from morning till night. He stood before her now, his back to the flaming logs in the fireplace, looking alternately down at his boots and up at his sister. Peter’s face wore an amused but pleasant smile. Katherine must certainly be nice, clever, and delightful, to have won Mary, usually so slow in friendship.

“Whether she is deep—deeply good, I mean—I don’t know; one can’t tell. But, at all events, she is sincere to the core.” Mary had called on the Archinards some days ago, and had seen Katherine every day since then.

Mary’s stateliness had not become buxom. The fine lines of her face had lost their former touch of heaviness. Her gray hair—grayer than Peter’s—and fresh skin gave her a look of merely perfected maturity. Life had gone well with her; everybody said that; yet Mary knew the sadness of life. She had lost two of her babies, and sorrow had softened, ripened her. The Mary of ten years ago had not had that tender look in her eyes, those lines of sympathetic sensibility about the lips. Her decisively friendly sentence was followed by a little sigh of disapprobation.

“As for Hilda!”

“As for Hilda?”

“I am disappointed, Peter. Yes; we went to her studio this morning; Katherine took me there; Katherine’s pride in her is pretty. Yes; I suppose the pictures are very clever, if one likes those rather misty things. They look as though they were painted in the back drawing-room behind the sofa!” Peter laughed. “I don’t pretend to know. I suppose au fond I am a Philistine, with a craving for a story on the canvas. I don’t really appreciate Whistler, so of course I haven’t a right to an opinion at all. But however clever they may be, I don’t think those pictures should fill her life to the exclusion of everything. The girl owes a duty to herself; I don’t speak of her duty to others. I have no patience with Mrs. Archinard, she is simply insufferable! Katherine’s patience with her is admirable; but Hilda is completely one-sided, and she is not great enough for that. But she will fancy herself great before long. Lady—— told me that she was never seen with her sister—there is that cut off, you see—how natural that they should go out together! Of course she will grow morbidly egotistic, people who never meet other people always do; they fancy themselves grandly misunderstood. So unhealthy, too! She looked like a ghost.”

“Poor little Hilda! She probably fancies an artist’s mission the highest. Perhaps it is, Mary.”

“Not in a woman’s case”—Mrs. Apswith spoke with a vigorous decision that would have stamped her with ignominy in the eyes of the perhaps mythical New Woman; “woman’s art is never serious enough for heroics.”

“Perhaps it would be, if they would show a consistent heroism for it.” Peter opposed Mary for the sake of the argument, and for the sake of an old loyalty. Au fond he agreed with her.

“A female Palissy would revolutionize our ideas of woman’s art.”

“A pleasant creature she would be! Tearing up the flooring and breaking the chairs for firewood! An abominable desecration of the housewifely instincts! I don’t know what Allan Hope will do about it,” Mary pursued.

“Ah! That is an accepted fact, then?”

“Dear me, yes. Lady Mainwaring is very anxious for it. It shows what Allan’s steady persistency has accomplished. The child hasn’t a penny, you know.”

“You think she’d have him?”

“Of course she will have him. And a lucky girl she is for the chance! But, before the definite acceptance, she will, of course, lead him the usual dance; it’s quite the thing now a............