"Well," answered Isabella, reluctantly, "if Mr. Howard's mother had lived he might have been a better man."
"You call him Mr. Howard," cried Lucille, darting into one of those side issues by which women so often reach their goal. "Do you call him so to his face?"
"No."
"What do you call him?" asked Lucille, with the persistence of a child on a trifle.
"Dick."
"And yet you do not like him?"
"I have never thought whether I like him or not—one does not think of such questions with people who are like one's own family."
"But surely," said Lucille, "one cannot like a person who is not good?"
"Of course not," answered the other, with her shadowy smile. "At least it is always so written in books."
