t it to her, with a smile of
half-indulgent, half-contemptuous assent to some of her
ideas, which was altered, when she returned the volumes,
by the active necessity of defending his own. Elfrida
had been accepted at the Cardiffs, with the ready tolerance
which they had for types that were remarkable to them,
and not entirely disagreeable; though Janet was always
telling her father that it was impossible that Elfrida
should be a type--she was an exception of the most
exceptionable sort. "I'll admit her to be abnormal, if
you like," Cardiff would return, "but only from an insular
point of view. I dare say they grow that way in Illinois."
But that was in the early stages of their acquaintance
with Miss Bell, which ripened with unprecedented rapidity
for an acquaintance in Kensington Square. It was before
Janet had taken to walking across the gardens with Elfrida
in the half-hour between tea-time and dressing for dinner,
when the two young women, sometimes under dripping
umbrellas, would let the right omnibus follow the wrong
one toward Fleet Street twice and thrice in their
disinclination to postpone what they had to say to each
other. It was also before Elfrida's invasion of the
library and fee-simple of the books, and before she had
said there many things that were original, some that were
impertinent, and a few that were true. The Cardiffs
discussed her less freely as the weeks went on--a sure
sign that she was becoming better liked, accepted less
as a phenomenon, and more as a friend. There grew up in
Janet the beginnings of the strong affection which she
felt for a very few people, an affection which invariably
mingled itself with a lively desire to bestir herself on
their account, to be fully informed as to their
circumstances, and above all to possess relations of
absolute directness with them. She had an imperious
successful strain which insisted upon all this. She was
a capable creature of much perception for twenty-four,
and she had a sense of injury when for any reason she
was not allowed to use her faculties for the benefit of
any one she liked in a way which excited the desire to
do it. Janet had to reproach herself, when she thought
of it, that this sort of liking seldom came by entirely
approved channels, and hardly ever found an object in
her visiting-list. Its first and almost its only essential,
to speak boldly, was an artistic susceptibility with some
sort of relation to her own, which her visiti