at added some new treasure to his perfectly arranged rooms,
and in consequence some new song to his seductive repertoire, left a new
sting in her soul. She had been influencing somebody or something all
her life. She had been educating and directing and benefiting till she
was forced to be grateful to that providential generosity that caused
new wickedness and ignorance to spring constantly from this very soil
she had cleared; for if one reform had been sufficient she would long
since have been obliged to leave the little village for larger fields.
She had ministered to the starved mind as to the stunted body; the idle
and dissolute quaked before her. And yet here in her own household,
across her hall, lived the epitome of uselessness, indolence,
selfishness, and--she was forced to admit it--charm. What corresponded
to a sense of humor in her caught at the discrepancy and worried over
it.

What! was she not competent, then, to influence her equals? For in
everything but moral stamina she was forced to admit that her lodger was
her equal, if no more. Widely travelled, well read, well born, talented,
handsome, deferential--but persistently amused at her, irrevocably
indolent, hopelessly selfish.

With the firm intention of turning the occasions to his benefit, she had
finally accepted his regular and courteous invitation to take tea with
him, and had watched his graceful management of samovar and tea-cup with
open disfavor. "A habit picked up in England," he had assured her, when,
with the frankness characteristic of her, she had criticised him for the
effeminacy. And his smiling explanation had sent a sudden flush across
her smooth, firm cheeks. Was she provincial? Did she seem to him a New
England villager and nothing more? She bit her lip, and the appeal she
had planned went unspoken that day.

But her desire could not rest, and as to her strict notions the
continual visits from her side to his seemed unsuitable, she gave in
self-defence her own invitation, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoons
saw her lodger across the hall drinking her own tea with wine and
plum-cake by the shining kettle.

If she could command his admiration in no other way, she felt, she might
safely rely on his deferential respect for the owner of that pewter
tea-service--velvety, shimmering, glistening dully, with shapes that
vaguely recalled Greek lamps and Etruscan urns. And she piled wedges of
ambrosial plum-cake with yellow frosting on sp