“Well,” said Gertrude, “you have seen people before that you have liked, have you not?”

“Indeed I have, thank Heaven!”

“And they have been very different from us,” Gertrude went on.

“That only proves,” said Felix, “that there are a thousand different ways of being good company.”

“Do you think us good company?” asked Gertrude.

“Company for a king!”

Gertrude was silent a moment; and then, “There must be a thousand different ways of being dreary,” she said; “and sometimes I think we make use of them all.”

Felix stood up quickly, holding up his hand. “If you could only keep that look on your face for half an hour—while I catch it!” he said. “It is uncommonly handsome.”

“To look handsome for half an hour—that is a great deal to ask of me,” she answered.

“It would be the portrait of a young woman who has taken some vow, some pledge, that she repents of,” said Felix, “and who is thinking it over at leisure.”

“I have taken no vow, no pledge,” said Gertrude, very gravely; “I have nothing to repent of.”

“My dear cousin, that was only a figure of speech. I am very sure that no one in your excellent family has anything to repent of.”

“And yet we are always repenting!” Gertrude exclaimed. “That is what I mean by our being dreary. You know it perfectly well; you only pretend that you don’t.”

Felix gave a quick laugh. “The half hour is going on, and yet you are handsomer than ever. One must be careful what one says, you see.”

“To me,” said Gertrude, “you can say anything.”

Felix looked at her, as an artist might, and painted for some time in silence.

“Yes, you seem to me different from your father and sister—from most of the people you have lived with,” he observed.

“To say that one’s self,” Gertrude went on, “is like saying—by implication, at least—that one is better. I am not better; I am much worse. But they say themselves that I 

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