ears of discretion, Miss Brander. You were growing
a very discreet damsel when I last saw you, and I felt rather afraid of
you. I know that you were good enough to express much disapproval of me
and my ways."

"Very likely I did, though I don't remember it. I think I was very
outspoken in those days."

"I do not think you have changed much in that respect, Mary," Miss
Treadwyn said.

"Why should one say what one does not think," Mary said, sturdily, "it
would be much better if we all did so. Do you not agree with me, Mr.
Hartington?"

"It depends upon what 'better' means; it would be awful to think of the
consequences if we all did so. Society would dissolve itself into its
component parts and every man's hand would be against his neighbor. I do
not say that people should say what they do not think, but I am sure
that the world would not be so pleasant as it is by a long way if every
one was to say exactly what he did think. Just imagine what the
sensation of authors or artists would be if critics were to state their
opinions with absolute candor!"

"I think it were better if they did so, Mr. Hartington; in that case
there would be fewer idiotic books written and fewer men wasting their
lives in trying vainly to produce good paintings."

"That is true enough," Cuthbert laughed, "but you must remember that
critics do not buy either books or paintings, and that there are plenty
of people who buy the idiotic books and are perfectly content with
pictures without a particle of artistic merit."

"I suppose so," she admitted, reluctantly, "but so much the worse, for
it causes mediocrity!"

"But we are most of us mediocre--authors like Dickens, Thackeray, and
George Eliot are the exception--and so are artists like Millais and
Landseer, but when books and paintings give pleasure they fulfil their
purpose, don't they?"

"If their purpose is to afford a livelihood to those that make them, I
suppose they do, Mr. Hartington; but they do not fulfil what ought to be
their purpose--which should, of course, be to elevate the mind or to
improve the taste."

He shook his head.

"That is too lofty an ideal altogether for me," he said. "I doubt
whether men are much happier for their minds being improved or their
tastes elevated, unless they are fortunate enough to have sufficient
means to gratify those tastes. If a man is happy and contented with the
street he lives in, the house he inhabits, the pictures on his walls,
and t