"I hope I shall be able to suit you; but in any case, I have quite a lot of French books at the house, which are at your service."
"But, you see, my maid can't read French, and so I have to have translations."
"Oh, I forgot. Well, perhaps, Miss Rothermel, some of them might suit you, if you'd let me send them in to you."
"You are very kind," said Missy. "But I have my reading laid out for two months to come, and it would be impossible for me to take up anything more."
Mr. Andrews bowed, and got up to take his leave. Miss Varian gave him the card and her hand too, and said an effusive and very neighborly good-night. Missy half rose, and bent her head, but did not offer to put out her hand.
"The caprices and the tempers of women," he thought, as he went home under the big trees and looked back at the friendly or unfriendly lights gleaming from the library window. "Their caprices and their tempers and their tongues!"
Nevertheless, he found himself speculating upon which of Balzac's books Missy had been fascinated with and horrified about. He did not like to think of her as reading Balzac, and being ashamed to own it too. He always thought of her as a "severe little lady;" she seemed to him, with all her caprice and temper, and even her sharp tongue, as the embodiment of all the domestic virtues. He had liked her face that day she came out of church, with her blind aunt on her arm, and little Jay close at her side; surely she was a good woman, if there were good women in the world. Nevertheless (as he lit his cigar), he could have wished she had a better sense of justice, and did not vent on him the anger engendered by the faults of others.
The next evening promptly upon the arrival of the carriage from the train, Eliza and Jay brought over "Les Petites Misères," and another of Balzac for Miss Varian from the library, and the last "Saturday Review," "Revue des Deux Mondes" and "Punch" for Miss Rothermel. Missy would not even take them off the table where her aunt had laid them down. She considered it quite humbling that he could not understand his literature had been refused. She had quite prided herself on the decision with which she had nipped in the bud that neighborliness, and here he was persistently blooming out into politeness again.
"This shall be put an end to forever," she thought. "They shall go back with their leaves uncut to-morrow, and that he cannot misconstrue."