She sat in an attitude, arranged the folds of her boxcloth shirt, patted the lace into place about her neck.

"You make me feel very badly," she said.

Laurence objected to soiling his conscience by lying at least as much as most men. But surely, he argued, there are cases of justifiable perjury, as of justifiable homicide.

"I am awfully sorry," he said, "to dash your hopes of a sensation. But, you see, neither the romantic, old house or its inward history are my property as yet, so I can't give either away however much I may desire to do so."

"I know it. I do not ask you to commit any indiscretion. I do not ask you to tell me anything."

Laurence braced himself.

"How fortunate, since there's nothing to tell!" he said.

His hostess looked hard at him for a moment, and then at the floor.

"There was a time, before I lived among them, when I believed the English to be a simple and undiplomatic nation," she said. "I know better now."

Laurence was half-amused, half-irritated.

"Oh, come!" he retorted, "it's too bad to make it an international question."

"I had promised myself such a fine time in that house," she continued, still gazing abstractedly at the floor. "Virginia is, I consider—and I believe you know that—the most perfectly lovely woman of my acquaintance. She represents the last word of our American culture; and I would advise every young girl, who was ambitious of social success, to study her as a model. She catches right on to everything new at once, and her power of repartee is great. My admiration for Virginia is so overpowering, that it would really be a wonderful encouragement to my self-respect to get a step ahead of her for once. Well, I concluded I could do that in a perfectly legitimate manner. I planned to ask you to let me go right around that house from cellar to garret, and acquaint myself with the whole interior. I wanted to see it before Virginia had brought our younger and more complex Western civilisation to bear upon it. I promised myself great gratification from doing that."

As she finished speaking, Mrs. Bellingham raised her eyes. That she was in earnest, keenly inquisitive, there could be no doubt.

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