Two Strangers

TWO STRANGERS


BY MRS. OLIPHANT NEW YORK R. F. FENNO AND COMPANY 112 FIFTH AVENUE Copyright, 1895 R. F. FENNO AND COMPANY

“And who is this young widow of yours whom I hear so much about? I understand Lucy’s rapture over any stranger; but you, too, mother—”
“I too—well, there is no particular witchcraft about it; a nice young woman has as much chance with me as with any one, Ralph—”
“Oh, if it’s only a nice young woman—”
“It’s a great deal more,” said Lucy. “Why, Miss Jones at the school is a nice young woman—don’t you be taken in by mother’s old-fashioned stilts. She is a darling—she is as nice as nice can be. She’s pretty, and she’s good, and she’s clever. She has read a lot, and seen a lot, and been everywhere, and knows heaps and heaps of people, and yet just as simple and as nice as if she had never been married, never had a baby, and was just a girl like the rest of us—Mother! there is nothing wrong in what I said?” Lucy suddenly cried, stopping short and blushing all over with the innocent alarm of a youthfulness which had not been trained to modern modes of speech.
“Nothing wrong, certainly,” said the mother, with a half smile; “but—there is no need for entering into all these details.”
“They would have found out immediately, though,” said Lucy, with a lowered voice, “that there was—Tiny, you know.”