who was not in
the mood for the kind of talk they were likely to get there, declined
on the plea that he had work to do at home; and Winsett said: "Oh,
well so have I for that matter, and I'll be the Industrious Apprentice
too."

They strolled along together, and presently Winsett said: "Look here,
what I'm really after is the name of the dark lady in that swell box of
yours--with the Beauforts, wasn't she? The one your friend Lefferts
seems so smitten by."

Archer, he could not have said why, was slightly annoyed. What the
devil did Ned Winsett want with Ellen Olenska's name? And above all,
why did he couple it with Lefferts's? It was unlike Winsett to
manifest such curiosity; but after all, Archer remembered, he was a
journalist.

"It's not for an interview, I hope?" he laughed.

"Well--not for the press; just for myself," Winsett rejoined. "The
fact is she's a neighbour of mine--queer quarter for such a beauty to
settle in--and she's been awfully kind to my little boy, who fell down
her area chasing his kitten, and gave himself a nasty cut. She rushed
in bareheaded, carrying him in her arms, with his knee all beautifully
bandaged, and was so sympathetic and beautiful that my wife was too
dazzled to ask her name."

A pleasant glow dilated Archer's heart. There was nothing
extraordinary in the tale: any woman would have done as much for a
neighbour's child. But it was just like Ellen, he felt, to have rushed
in bareheaded, carrying the boy in her arms, and to have dazzled poor
Mrs. Winsett into forgetting to ask who she was.

"That is the Countess Olenska--a granddaughter of old Mrs. Mingott's."

"Whew--a Countess!" whistled Ned Winsett. "Well, I didn't know
Countesses were so neighbourly. Mingotts ain't."

"They would be, if you'd let them."

"Ah, well--" It was their old interminable argument as to the
obstinate unwillingness of the "clever people" to frequent the
fashionable, and both men knew that there was no use in prolonging it.

"I wonder," Winsett broke off, "how a Countess happens to live in our
slum?"

"Because she doesn't care a hang about where she lives--or about any of
our little social sign-posts," said Archer, with a secret pride in his
own picture of her.

"H'm--been in bigger places, I suppose," the other commented. "Well,
here's my corner."

He slouched off across Broadway, and Archer stood looking after him and
musing on his last words.

Ned Winsett had those flas