eal to her,
and generously pleased. But the chance offered, and she perversely
seized it.

He protested with a simple "Ah!" and she was ashamed.

"I don't know," she hurried on to say. "I never thought about it in
that way."

"Well, it isn't so simple any more, after you once begin. I don't
suppose I shall be at peace quite till I try what I can do; and seeing
you Sunday brought Pymantoning all so freshly back, that I've been
wondering, from time to time, ever since, whether you could possibly
help me."

"I will try, as the good little boy said," Cornelia assented.

"It makes me feel like a good little boy to have asked it." Ludlow did
not profit by the chance which the conclusion of their agreement
offered him, to go. He stayed and talked on, and from time to time he
recurred to what he had asked, and said he was afraid she would think
he was using her, and tried to explain that he really was not, but was
approaching her most humbly for her opinion. He could not make it out,
but they got better and better acquainted in the fun they had with his
failures. It went on till Cornelia said, "Now, really, if you keep it
up, I shall have to stand you in the corner, with your face to the
wall."

"Oh, do!" he entreated. "It would be such a relief."

"You know I _was_ a teacher two winters," she said, "and have actually
stood boys in corners."

That seemed to interest him afresh; he made her tell him all about her
school-teaching. He stayed till the bell rang for dinner, and he
suffered a decent moment to pass before he rose then.

"After all," he said at parting, "I think you'd better decide that it's
merely my Manet you're coming to see."

"Yes, merely the Manet," Cornelia assented. "If I choose, the Ludlows
will all be stood in the corners with their faces to the wall."

She found her own face very flushed, when she climbed up to her room
for a moment before going in to dinner, and her heart seemed to be
beating in her neck. She looked at Mrs. Westley's note. It stated
everything so explicitly that she did not see why Mr. Ludlow need have
come to explain. She remembered now that she had forgotten to tell him
she was not going.

XXI.

Cornelia thought Mrs. Westley would come for Charmian and herself in
her carriage; but when they went down to her in the Synthesis office,
they found that she had planned to walk with them to Ludlow's studio.
She said it was not a great way off; and she had got into the h