what you think, and I daresay we are not much on
art," said Lady Mary with tolerant good humor. "We leave that to peoples
who have no physique. Treffinger made a stir for a time, but it
seems that we are not capable of a sustained appreciation of such
extraordinary methods. In the end we go back to the pictures we find
agreeable and unperplexing. He was regarded as an experiment, I fancy;
and now it seems that he was rather an unsuccessful one. If you've come
to us in a missionary spirit, we'll tolerate you politely, but we'll
laugh in our sleeve, I warn you."

"That really doesn't daunt me, Lady Mary," declared MacMaster blandly.
"As I told you, I'm a man with a mission."

Lady Mary laughed her hoarse, baritone laugh. "Bravo! And you've come to
me for inspiration for your panegyric?"

MacMaster smiled with some embarrassment. "Not altogether for that
purpose. But I want to consult you, Lady Mary, about the advisability
of troubling Lady Ellen Treffinger in the matter. It seems scarcely
legitimate to go on without asking her to give some sort of grace to my
proceedings, yet I feared the whole subject might be painful to her. I
shall rely wholly upon your discretion."

"I think she would prefer to be consulted," replied Lady Mary
judicially. "I can't understand how she endures to have the wretched
affair continually raked up, but she does. She seems to feel a sort of
moral responsibility. Ellen has always been singularly conscientious
about this matter, insofar as her light goes,--which rather puzzles me,
as hers is not exactly a magnanimous nature. She is certainly trying to
do what she believes to be the right thing. I shall write to her, and
you can see her when she returns from Italy."

"I want very much to meet her. She is, I hope, quite recovered in every
way," queried MacMaster, hesitatingly.

"No, I can't say that she is. She has remained in much the same
condition she sank to before his death. He trampled over pretty much
whatever there was in her, I fancy. Women don't recover from wounds of
that sort--at least, not women of Ellen's grain. They go on bleeding
inwardly."

"You, at any rate, have not grown more reconciled," MacMaster ventured.

"Oh I give him his dues. He was a colorist, I grant you; but that is
a vague and unsatisfactory quality to marry to; Lady Ellen Treffinger
found it so."

"But, my dear Lady Mary," expostulated MacMaster, "and just repress me
if I'm becoming too personal--but it