s, Westover came away very unhappy at what he had seen.
His unhappiness connected itself so distinctly with Lynde's family
that he went and sat down beside Miss Lynde from an obscure impulse of
compassion, and tried to talk with her. It would not have been so
hard if she were merely deaf, for she had the skill of deaf people in
arranging the conversation so that a nodded yes or no would be all that
was needed to carry it forward. But to Westover she was terribly dull,
and he was gasping, as in an exhausted receiver, when Bessie came up
with a smile of radiant recognition for his extremity. She got rid of
her partner, and devoted herself at once to Westover. "How good of you!"
she said, without giving him the pain of an awkward disclaimer.

He could counter in equal sincerity and ambiguity, "How beautiful of
you."

"Yes," she said, "I am looking rather well, tonight; but don't you think
effective would have been a better word?" She smiled across her aunt at
him out of a cloud of pink, from which her thin shoulders and slender
neck emerged, and her arms, gloved to the top, fell into her lap; one of
them seemed to terminate naturally in the fan which sensitively shared
the inquiescence of her person.

"I will say effective, too, if you insist," said Westover. "But at the
same time you're the most beautiful person here."

"How lovely of you, even if you don't mean it," she sighed. "If girls
could have more of those things said to them, they would be better,
don't you think? Or at least feel better."

Westover laughed. "We might organize a society--they have them for
nearly everything now--for saying pleasant things to young ladies with a
view to the moral effect."

"Oh, do I."

"But it ought to be done conscientiously, and you couldn't go round
telling every one that she was the most beautiful girl in the room."

"Why not? She'd believe it!"

"Yes; but the effect on the members of the society?"

"Oh yes; that! But you could vary it so as to save your conscience. You
could say, 'How divinely you're looking!' or 'How angelic!' or 'You're
the very poetry of motion,' or 'You are grace itself,' or 'Your gown is
a perfect dream, or any little commonplace, and every one would take it
for praise of her personal appearance, and feel herself a great beauty,
just as I do now, though I know very well that I'm all out of drawing,
and just chicqued together."

"I couldn't allow any one but you to say that, Miss Bessie; and I