who, after dinner, talked of sport and stocks,
while their host blinked at them silently through the smoke of his
cheap cigars.

The first innovation that struck me was a sudden improvement in the
quality of the cigars. Was this Daisy's doing? (Mrs. Ambrose was
Daisy.) It was hard to tell--she produced her results so noiselessly.
With her fair bent head and vague smile, she seemed to watch life flow
by without, as yet, trusting anything of her own to its current. But
she was watching, at any rate, and anything might come of that. Such
modifications as she produced were as yet almost imperceptible to any
but the trained observer. I saw that Paul wished her to be well
dressed, but also that he suffered her to drive in a hired brougham,
and to have her door opened by the raw-boned Celt who had bumped down
the dishes on his bachelor table. The drawing-room curtains were
renewed, but this change served only to accentuate the enormities of
the carpet, and perhaps discouraged Mrs. Ambrose from farther
experiments. At any rate, the desecrating touch that Halidon had
affected to dread made no other inroads on the serried ugliness of the
Ambrose interior.

In the early summer, when Ned returned, the Ambroses had flown to
Europe again--and the Academy was still on paper.

"Well, what do you make of her?" the traveller asked, as we sat over
our first dinner together.

"Too many things--and they don't hang together. Perhaps she's still in
the chrysalis stage."

"Has Paul chucked the scheme altogether?"

"No. He sent for me and we had a talk about it just before he sailed."

"And what impression did you get?"

"That he had waited to send for me _till_ just before he sailed."

"Oh, there you go again!" I offered no denial, and after a pause he
asked: "Did _she_ ever talk to you about it?"

"Yes. Once or twice--in snatches."

"Well--?"

"She thinks it all _too_ beautiful. She would like to see beauty put
within the reach of everyone."

"And the practical side--?"

"She says she doesn't understand business."

Halidon rose with a shrug. "Very likely you frightened her with your
ugly sardonic grin."

"It's not my fault if my smile doesn't add to the sum-total of beauty."

"Well," he said, ignoring me, "next winter we shall see."

But the next winter did not bring Ambrose back. A brief line, written
in November from the Italian lakes, told me that he had "a rotten
cough," and that the doctors were packing him off t