"The day is too stormy for outdoor amusements, my dear," said Jean d'Alberg, as she poked the fire, "so I must try to distract you as much as possible in the house."
"That will be an easy matter if you like," said Honor, "do but leave me lost in these spacious cushions, before that cheerful fire, and I can prophesy the treat that is in store for me."
Mde. d'Alberg smiled slowly. She turned and took from a small wicker basket near her a bundle of misty looking thread and lace, and with her needle in one hand and the end of her thread between her teeth, she said,
"Whether you know it or not, my dear, you have given me a big peep into your character by that much of an assertion."
Honor looked suddenly up. She was beginning to feel a little nervous with this cool, calculating, all-seeing woman. But not to show what she felt, she sank back imperceptibly among the cushions, and answered, with an effort at in difference,
"I hope I betray my good symptoms first, at least to strangers who are inclined to judge from appearances."
The elder lady looked interested. Her face wore a half-pleasing, half-teasing expression, but like Honor she was seeking to veneer the real truth under assumed veils at the same time that she was dying to draw out the latent phases of her companion's nature.
"The word 'good,'" she said, stitching rapidly, "is such a mysterious one, and has in these days of general improvement, secured for itself a relative meaning which benefits as many as it injures, and particularly, as regards one's personal virtues or defects, which are many or few according to the disposition of the speaker towards the one spoken of. Nevertheless I must tell you that your tendency to dreaminess, and your exalted ideas of sentiment, are what mostly constitute the modern young lady. Take those elements out of human life, and one-third of our fiction volumes crumble on the shelf. Society limps into retirement, for her most prominent limbs have been amputated. The curtain must drop for good on the stage, for there is no other part for actors to play in the nineteenth century. Our streets would be almost desolate, except for fussy businessmen and market women, and those dear few privileged ones, who have the priceless reputation of being sans coeur."
Honor grew deeply interested. She had not expected to find such a woman as this. Mr. Rayne had spoken of her as one does of any superannuated person or thing that is always on hand if wanted. It was such a long time since she had indulged in any such abstract conversations, that it was with renewed delight she hailed her turn to speak.
"I think it only fair," said she, looking straight into the fire, "that
I should take my turn at interpreting you."