the precious proof-sheets with which Ambient
had intrusted me and which I was nursing there under my arm. "It is the
opening chapters of his new book," I said. "Fancy my satisfaction at
being allowed to carry them to my room!"

She turned away, leaving me to take my candlestick from the table in the
hall; but before we separated, thinking it apparently a good occasion
to let me know once for all--since I was beginning, it would seem, to be
quite "thick" with my host--that there was no fitness in my appealing
to her for sympathy in such a case; before we separated, I say, she
remarked to me with her quick, round, well-bred utterance, "I dare say
you attribute to me ideas that I have n't got I don't take that sort
of interest in my husband's proof-sheets. I consider his writings most
objectionable!"

PART II.

I had some curious conversation the next morning with Miss Ambient, whom
I found strolling in the garden before breakfast The whole place looked
as fresh and trim, amid the twitter of the birds, as if, an hour
before, the housemaids had been turned into it with their dustpans and
feather-brushes, I almost hesitated to light a cigarette, and was doubly
startled when, in the act of doing so, I suddenly perceived the
sister of my host, who had, in any case, something of the oddity of
an apparition, standing before me. She might have been posing for her
photograph. Her sad-colored robe arranged itself in serpentine folds at
her feet; her hands locked themselves listlessly together in front; and
her chin rested upon a cinque-cento ruff. The first thing I did,
after bidding her good-morning, was to ask her for news of her little
nephew,--to express the hope that she had heard he was better. She was
able to gratify this hope, and spoke as if we might expect to see him
during the day. We walked through the shrubberies together, and she gave
me a great deal of information about her brother's menage, which offered
me an opportunity to mention to her that his wife had told me, the night
before, that she thought his productions objectionable.

"She does n't usually come out with that so soon!" Miss Ambient
exclaimed, in answer to this piece of gossip. "Poor lady, she saw that
I am a fanatic." "Yes, she won't like you for that. But you must n't
mind, if the rest of us like you! Beatrice thinks a work of art ought
to have a 'purpose.' But she's a charming woman--don't you think her
charming?--she's such a type of the l