ther so unwell.'

'Oh, he never let me come near him! I wasn't of the slightest use to
him!'

'Mrs. Egremont would have missed you.'

'Really he never gave her time. He perfectly devours her, body and
soul. Oh dear, no! 'Twas for no good I was kept there, but just pride
and ingratitude, though mother tried to call it being afraid for my
manners and my style.'

'In which, if you lapse into such talk, you fully justify the
precaution. I was just thinking what a young lady you had grown into,'
he answered in a tone of banter, under which, however, she felt a
rebuke; and while directing her attention to the Pantheon, he took care
to get within hearing again of Martin.

And in looking at these things, he carried her so far below the
surface. St. Michael was not so much Raffaelle's triumph of art as the
eternal victory over sin; the Sainte Chapelle, spite of all its modern
unsanctified gaudiness, was redolent of St. Louis; and the cell of the
slaughtered queen was as a martyr's shrine, trod with reverence. There
were associations with every turn, and Nuttie might have spent years at
Paris with another companion without imbibing so many impressions as on
this December day, when she came home so full of happy chatter that the
guests at the table d'hote glanced with amusement at the eager girl as
much as with admiration at the beautiful mother. Mr. Dutton had been
invited to come and take coffee and spend the evening with them again,
but Mr. Egremont's affairs with the dentist had been completed, and he
had picked up, or, more strictly speaking, Gregorio had hunted up for
him, a couple of French acquaintances, who appeared before long and
engrossed him entirely.

Mr. Dutton sat between the two ladies on a stiff dark-green sofa on the
opposite side of the room, and under cover of the eager,
half-shrieking, gesticulating talk of the Frenchmen they had a quiet
low-toned conversation, like old times, Alice said. 'More than old
times,' Nuttie added, and perhaps the others both agreed with her.

When the two Englishwomen started at some of the loud French tones,
almost imagining they were full of rage and fury, their friend smiled
and said that such had been his first notion on coming abroad.

'You have been a great deal abroad?' Mrs. Egremont asked; 'you seem
quite at home in Paris.'

'Oh, mamma, he showed me where the school was that he went to, and the
house where he lived! Up such an immense way!'

Mr. Dutt