ended or come back, either, though
that might have been for want of cheek.

She ended by declaring she was used to going into society without her
brother's protection, or even his company, and she would do her best to
get on without his advice. Or was it his conduct he wished her to profit
by?

It had come to the fish going out by this time, and Alan, who had eaten
with no appetite, and drunken feverishly of apollinaris, flung down his
napkin and went out, too.

"What is the matter?" asked his aunt, looking after him.

Bessie shrugged, but she said, presently, with her lips more than her
voice: "I don't think he feels very well."

"Do you think he--"

The girl frowned assent, and the meal went on to its end. Then she
and her aunt went into the large, dull library, where they passed the
evenings which Bessie did not spend in some social function. These
evenings were growing rather more frequent, with her advancing years,
for she was now nearly twenty-five, and there were few Seniors so old.
She was not the kind of girl to renew her youth with the Sophomores and
Freshmen in the classes succeeding the class with which she had danced
through college; so far as she had kept up the old relation with
students, she continued it with the men who had gone into the
law-school. But she saw less and less of these without seeing more of
other men, and perhaps in the last analysis she was not a favorite. She
was allowed to be fascinating, but she was not felt to be flattering,
and people would rather be flattered than fascinated. In fact, the men
were mostly afraid of her; and it has been observed of girls of this
kind that the men who are not afraid of them are such as they would do
well to be afraid of. Whether that was quite the case with Bessie Lynde
or not, it was certain that she who was always the cleverest girl in
the room, and if not the prettiest, then the most effective, had not the
best men about her. Her men were apt to be those whom the other girls
called stupid or horrid, and whom it would not be easy, though it might
be more just, to classify otherwise. The other girls wondered what she
could see in them; but perhaps it was not necessary that she should see
anything in them, if they could see all she wished them to see, and no
more, in her.

The room where tea was now brought and put before her was volumed round
by the collections of her grandfather, except for the spaces filled by
his portrait and that of ear