he reader at best so very small a knot to
untie that I need not hope to excite his curiosity by delaying to
remark that Mrs. Ambient hated her sister-in-law. This I only found
out afterwards, when I found out some other things. But I mention it at
once, for I shall perhaps not seem to count too much on having enlisted
the imagination of the reader if I say that he will already have guessed
it Mrs. Ambient was a person of conscience, and she endeavored to behave
properly to her kinswoman, who spent a month with her twice a year; but
it required no great insight to discover that the two ladies were made
of a very different paste, and that the usual feminine hypocrisies must
have cost them, on either side, much more than the usual effort. Mrs.
Ambient, smooth-haired, thin-lipped, perpetually fresh, must have
regarded her crumpled and dishevelled visitor as a very stale joke; she
herself was not a Rossetti, but a Gainsborough or a Lawrence, and she
had in her appearance no elements more romantic than a cold, ladylike
candor, and a well-starched muslin dress.

It was in a garment, and with an expression, of this kind, that she made
her entrance, after I had exchanged a few words with Miss Ambient. Her
husband presently followed her, and there being no other company we went
to dinner. The impression I received from that repast is present to me
still. There were elements of oddity in my companions, but they were
vague and latent, and did n't interfere with my delight It came mainly,
of course, from Ambient's talk, which was the most brilliant and
interesting I had ever heard. I know not whether he laid himself out
to dazzle a rather juvenile pilgrim from over the sea; but it matters
little, for it was very easy for him to shine. He was almost better as
a talker than as a writer; that is, if the extraordinary finish of his
written prose be really, as some people have maintained, a fault. There
was such a kindness in him, however, that I have no doubt it gave him
ideas to see me sit open-mouthed, as I suppose I did. Not so the two
ladies, who not only were very nearly dumb from beginning to the end
of the meal, but who had not the air of being struck with such an
exhibition of wit and knowledge. Mrs. Ambient, placid and detached, met
neither my eye nor her husband's; she attended to her dinner, watched
the servants, arranged the puckers in her dress, exchanged at wide
intervals a remark with her sister-in-law, and while she slowl