pleased or not that she treated
their meeting as something uneventful, too, and made a little joke
about remembering that he liked his tea without sugar.

"I wasn't aware that you knew that," he said.

"Oh, yes; that is the way Charmian always made it for you; and
sometimes I made it."

"To be sure. It seems a great while ago. How are you getting on with
your picture?"

"I'm not getting on," said Cornelia, and she turned aside to make a cup
of tea for an old gentleman, who confessed that he liked a spoonful of
rum in his. General Westley had brought him up and presented him, and
he remained chatting with Cornelia, apparently in the fatuity that if
he talked trivially to her he would be the same as a young man. Ludlow
stayed, too, and when the old gentleman got away, he said, the same as
if there had been no interruption, "Why aren't you getting on?"

"Because I'm not doing anything to it."

"You ought to. I told you what Wetmore said of it."

"Yes; but I don't know how," said Cornelia, with a laugh that he liked;
it seemed an effect of pleasure in his presence at her elbow; though
from time to time she ignored him, and talked with other people who
came for tea. He noticed that she had begun to have a little society
manner of her own; he did not know whether he liked it or not. She wore
a very pretty dress, too; one he had not seen before.

"Will you let me show you how--as well as I can?"

"After I've asked you? Thank you!"

"I offered, once, before you asked."

"Oh!" said Cornelia, with her face aslant from him over her tea-cups.
"I thought you had forgotten that."

He winced, but he knew that he deserved the little scratch. He did not
try to exculpate himself, but he asked, "May I talk with Miss Maybough
about it?"

Cornelia returned gayly, "It's a free country."

He rose from the chair which he had been keeping at her elbow, and
looked about over the room. It was very full, and the first of Mrs.
Westley's Thursdays was successful beyond question. With the roving
eye, which he would not suffer to be intercepted, he saw the
distinguished people whom she had hitherto affected in their usual
number, and in rather unusual number the society people who had
probably come to satisfy an amiable curiosity; he made his reflection
that Mrs. Westley's evolution was proceeding in the inevitable
direction, and that in another winter the swells would come so
increasingly that there would be no celebrities for them