action. At first
it had borne the cheerless look of a house uninhabited, but she had
quickly made it pleasant with flowers, photographs, and silver
ornaments. The Sheraton furniture and the chintzes suited the style of
her beauty. She felt that she looked in place in that comfortable room,
and was conscious that her frock fitted her and the circumstances
perfectly. Dick's eye wandered to the books that were scattered here and
there.

'And have you put out these portentous works in order to improve your
mind, or with the laudable desire of impressing me with the serious turn
of your intellect?'

'You don't think I'm such a perfect fool as to try and impress an
entirely flippant person like yourself?'

On the table at his elbow were a copy of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ and
one of the _Fortnightly Review_. He took up two books, and saw that one
was the _Froehliche Wissenschaft_ of Nietzsche, who was then beginning to
be read in England by the fashionable world and was on the eve of being
discovered by men of letters, while the other was a volume of Mrs.
Crowley's compatriot, William James.

'American women amaze me,' said Dick, as he put them down. 'They buy
their linen at Doucet's and read Herbert Spencer with avidity. And
what's more, they seem to like him. An Englishwoman can seldom read a
serious book without feeling a prig, and as soon as she feels a prig she
leaves off her corsets.'

'I feel vaguely that you're paying me a compliment,' returned Mrs.
Crowley, 'but it's so elusive that I can't quite catch it.'

'The best compliments are those that flutter about your head like
butterflies around a flower.'

'I much prefer to fix them down on a board with a pin through their
insides and a narrow strip of paper to hold down each wing.'

It was October, but the autumn, late that year, had scarcely coloured
the leaves, and the day was warm. Mrs. Crowley, however, was a chilly
being, and a fire burned in the grate. She put another log on it and
watched the merry crackle of the flames.

'It was very good of you to ask Lucy down here,' said Dick, suddenly.

'I don't know why. I like her so much. And I felt sure she would fit the
place. She looks a little like a Gainsborough portrait, doesn't she? And
I like to see her in this Georgian house.'

'She's not had much of a time since they sold the family place. It was a
great grief to her.'

'I feel such a pig to have here the things I bought at the sale.'

When t