s
my opinion that she has made fools of you and Mr. Flint too. As for
her being in love with him, nonsense! She would have fallen in love
with a wax figure at the Eden Musee, if it wore better clothes than
she was accustomed to. It tickles her vanity to fancy herself in love
with a gentleman. It is the next best thing to having him in love with
her."

"Don't you think you're a little hard on her?" asked Winifred, whose
feelings were unusually expansive this morning.

"I think you are entirely too soft about her," Miss Standish answered.
"It is sickly sentimentalism like yours which is filling the hospitals
with hysterical patients. Let 'em alone and they'll come round fast
enough."

"How do you account for my sickly sentimentalism when I have no heart,
as you told me the other day?" commented Winifred demurely, with
downcast eyes.

"Most natural thing in the world," said Miss Standish, rising to an
argument like an old war-horse to the sound of a trumpet.
"Tenderheartedness is touched by the sufferings of others.
Sentimentality is touched by your feeling for them, which is the most
enjoyable form of sadness."

At this point McGregor, who with admirable discretion had retreated to
the pantry, reappeared, served Miss Standish with coffee and eggs, and
again vanished, closing the door behind him.

"Really," cried Winifred, half laughing, half vexed, "you're as bad as
Mr. Flint, with your fine-spun differences."

"There, Winifred, you've said enough. Whatever the provocation, you
could not have hit back harder,--to say I am like Mr. Flint."

"It _was_ rather more than the truth warrants," answered Winifred,
with a little spot of color flaming up in her cheeks like a
danger-signal.

"I hope so," Miss Standish continued, oblivious of the red flag. "I
must say, Winifred, I think you let him come here too much."

"You don't like him?"

"No, I confess I don't."

"Then you needn't like me, either, for _I_ like him so much that I am
going to marry him."

Miss Standish laid down her egg-spoon, and sat staring at Winifred.

"Well!" she exclaimed at length, "this does beat all."

Winifred opened her lips to reply, when her attention was called to
the maid who came hurrying into the room with her cheesecloth duster
in one hand and a folded piece of paper in the other.

"The young woman, mum, as you said I was to call at nine,--well, she
isn't in her room, and the bed doesn't look as if it had been slept in
at al