"I suppose," she said, slowly, "that it is very womanish in me,—that I almost wish it had been some one else."
"Why?" he asked.
"You all have been moved by Mrs. Sylvestre," she replied, more slowly than before,—"all of you."
"How many of us are there?" he inquired.
"Colonel Tredennis has been moved, too," she said. "Not long before you came in he paid me a brief visit. He does not come often now, and his visits are usually for Janey, and not for me. I displeased him the night he went with me to the reception of the Secretary of State, and he has not been able to resign himself to seeing me often; but this evening he came in, and we talked of Mrs. Sylvestre. He had been calling upon her, and her perfections were fresh in his memory. He finds her beautiful and generous and sincere; she is not frivolous or capricious. I think that was what I gathered from the few remarks he made. I asked him questions; you see, I wanted to know. And she has this advantage,—she has all the virtues which the rest of us have not."
"You are very hard on Tredennis sometimes," he said, answering in this vague way the look on her face which he knew needed answer.
"Sometimes," she said; "sometimes he is hard on me."
"He has not been easy on me to-day," he returned.
"Poor Larry!" she said again. "Poor Larry!"
He smiled a little.