"Come, now," said the girl relentlessly, "what did he say?"

"Well," answered Mrs. Carling, "I must admit that he said 'Pooh!' for one thing, and that you were your own mistress, and, so far as he had seen, you were very well qualified to manage your own affairs."

Her sister clapped her hands. "Such discrimination have I not seen," she exclaimed, "no, not in Israel! What else did he say?" she demanded, with a dramatic gesture. "Let us know the worst."

Mrs. Carling laughed a little. "I don't remember," she admitted, "that he said anything more on the subject. He got into some perplexity about whether the steam should be off or on, and after that question was settled we went to bed." Mary laughed outright.

"So Julius doesn't think I need watching," she said.

"Mary," protested her sister in a hurt tone, "you don't think I ever did or could watch you? I don't want to pry into your secrets, dear,"

and she looked up with tears in her eyes. The girl dropped on her knees beside her sister and put her arms about her neck.

"You precious old lamb!" she cried, "I know you don't. You couldn't pry into anybody's secrets if you tried. You couldn't even try. But I haven't any, dear, and I'll tell you every one of them, and, rather than see a tear in your dear eyes, I would tell John Lenox that I never wanted to see him again; and I don't know what you have been thinking, but I haven't thought so at all" (which last a.s.sertion made even Mrs.

Carling laugh), "and I know that I have been teasing and horrid, and if you won't put me in the closet I will be good and answer every question like a nice little girl." Whereupon she gave her sister a kiss and resumed her seat with an air of abject penitence which lasted for a minute. Then she laughed again, though there was a watery gleam in her own eyes. Mrs. Carling gave her a look of great love and admiration.

"I ought not to have brought up the subject," she said, "knowing as I do how you feel about such discussions, but I love you so much that sometimes I can't help--"

"Alice," exclaimed the girl, "please have the kindness to call me a selfish P--I--G. It will relieve my feelings."

"But I do not think you are," said Mrs. Carling literally.

"But I am at times," declared Mary, "and you deserve not only to have, but to be shown, all the love and confidence that I can give you. It's only this, that sometimes your solicitude makes you imagine things that do not exist, and you think I am withholding my confidence; and then, again, I am enough like other people that I don't always know exactly what I do think. Now, about this matter--"

"Don't say a word about it, dear," her sister interrupted, "unless you would rather than not."

"I wish to," said Mary. "Of course I am not oblivious of the fact that Mr. Lenox comes here very often, nor that he seems to like to stay and talk with me, because, don't you know, if he didn't he could go when you do, and I don't mind admitting that, as a general thing, I like to have him stay; but, as I said to you, if it weren't for Julius he would not come here very often."

"Don't you think," said Mrs. Carling, now on an a.s.sured footing, "that if it were not for you he would not come so often?"

Perhaps Mary overestimated the attraction which her brother-in-law had for Mr. Lenox, and she smiled slightly as she thought that it was quite possible. "I suppose," she went on, with a little shrug of the shoulders, "that the proceeding is not strictly conventional, and that the absolutely correct thing would be for him to say good night when you and Julius do, and that there are those who would regard my permitting a young man in no way related to me to see me very often in the evening without the protection of a duenna as a very unbecoming thing."

"I never have had such a thought about it," declared Mrs. Carling.

"I never for a moment supposed you had, dear," said Mary, "nor have I.

We are rather unconventional people, making very few claims upon society, and upon whom 'society' makes very few."

"I am rather sorry for that on your account," said her sister.

"You needn't be," was the rejoinder. "I have no yearnings in that direction which are not satisfied with what I have." She sat for a minute or two with her hands clasped upon her knee, gazing reflectively into the fire, which, in the growing darkness of the winter afternoon, afforded almost the only light in the room. Presently she became conscious that her sister was regarding her with an air of expectation, and resumed: "Leaving the question of the conventions out of the discussion as settled," she said, "there is nothing, Alice, that you need have any concern about, either on Mr. Lenox's account or mine."

"You like him, don't you?" asked Mrs. Carling.

"Yes," said Mary frankly, "I like him very much. We have enough in common to be rather sympathetic, and we differ enough not to be dull, and so we get on very well. I never had a brother," she continued, after a momentary pause, "but I feel toward him as I fancy I should feel toward a brother of about my own age, though he is five or six years older than I am."

"You don't think, then," said Mrs. Carling timidly, "that you are getting to care for him at all?"

"In the sense that you use the word," was the reply, "not the least in the world. If there were to come a time when I really believed I should never see him again, I should be sorry; but if at any time it were a question of six months or a year, I do not think my equanimity would be particularly disturbed."

"And how about him?" suggested Mrs. Carling. There was no reply.

"Don't you think he may care for you, or be getting to?"

Mary frowned slightly, half closing her eyes and stirring a little uneasily in her chair.

"He hasn't said anything to me on the subject," she replied evasively.

"Would that be necessary?" asked her sister.

"Perhaps not," was the reply, "if the fact were very obvious."

"Isn't it?" persisted Mrs. Carling, with unusual tenacity.

"Well," said the girl, "to be quite frank with you, I have thought once or twice that he entertained some such idea--that is--no, I don't mean to put it just that way. I mean that once or twice something has occurred to give me that idea. That isn't very coherent, is it? But even if it be so," she went on after a moment, with a wave of her hands, "what of it? What does it signify? And if it does signify, what can I do about it?"

"You have thought about it, then?" said her sister.

"As much as I have told you," she answered. "I am not a very sentimental person, I think, and not very much on the lookout for such things, but I know there is such a thing as a man's taking a fancy to a young woman under circ.u.mstances which bring them often together, and I have been led to believe that it isn't necessarily fatal to the man even if nothing comes of it. But be that as it may," she said with a shrug of her shoulders, "what can I do about it? I can't say to Mr. Lenox, 'I think you ought not to come here so much,' unless I give a reason for it, and I think we have come to the conclusion that there is no reason except the danger--to put it in so many words--of his falling in love with me.

I couldn't quite say that to him, could I?"

"No, I suppose not," acquiesced Mrs. Carling faintly.

"No, I should say not," remarked the girl. "If he were to say anything to me in the way of--declaration is the word, isn't it?--it would be another matter. But there is no danger of that."

"Why not, if he is fond of you?" asked her sister.

"Because," said Mary, with an emphatic nod, "I won't let him," which a.s.sertion was rather weakened by her adding, "and he wouldn't, if I would."

"I don't understand," said her sister.

"Well," said Mary, "I don't pretend to know all that goes on in his mind; but allowing, or rather conjecturing, that he does care for me in the way you mean, I haven't the least fear of his telling me so, and one of the reasons is this, that he is wholly dependent upon his father, with no other prospect for years to come."

"I had the idea somehow," said Mrs. Carling, "that his father was very well-to-do. The young man gives one the impression of a person who has always had everything that he wanted."

"I think that is so," said Mary, "but he told me one day, coming over on the steamer, that he knew nothing whatever of his own prospects or his father's affairs. I don't remember--at least, it doesn't matter--how he came to say as much, but he did, and afterward gave me a whimsical catalogue of his acquirements and accomplishments, remarking, I remember, that 'there was not a dollar in the whole list'; and lately, though you must not fancy that he discusses his own affairs with me, he has now and then said something to make me guess that he was somewhat troubled about them."

"Is he doing anything?" asked Mrs. Carling.

"He told me the first evening he called here," said Mary, "that he was studying law, at his father's suggestion; but I don't remember the name of the firm in whose office he is."

"Why doesn't he ask his father about his prospects?" said Mrs. Carling.

Mary laughed. "You seem to be so much more interested in the matter than I am," she said, "why don't you ask him yourself?" To which unjustifiable rejoinder her sister made no reply.

"I don't see why he shouldn't," she remarked.

"I think I understand," said Mary. "I fancy from what he has told me that his father is a singularly reticent man, but one in whom his son has always had the most implicit confidence. I imagine, too, that until recently, at any rate, he has taken it for granted that his father was wealthy. He has not confided any misgivings to me, but if he has any he is just the sort of person not to ask, and certainly not to press a question with his father."

"It would seem like carrying delicacy almost too far," remarked Mrs.

Carling.