ery showy. They were
filled with buhl and knick-knacks gathered on all parts of the
Continent, and lavishly displayed, not always in good keeping. A little
sister, Claribel, came running up to us when we entered, and clung
fondly to Hermione, who sat down at the Erard grand piano and sang to
us, without suggestion, a gay little French song. She was taking
lessons, Amy afterward told me, of the master most in vogue in Paris and
of all others the most expensive. Amy, who could sing well herself,
disparaged Hermione's voice to me, and sighed as she thought of the
waste of those inestimable lessons.

Then Miss Hermione lifted the top of an ormolu box on the chimney-piece
of a boudoir and showed Amy and me, under the rose as it were, some
cigarettes, with a laugh. "Mamma's," she said: "she has a _faiblesse_
that way."

"Oh, Hermione! you don't?" cried Amy.

"No, _I_ don't," said Hermione more gravely.

I was so amused by her, so fascinated, so completely at my ease with
her, that I could have stayed on without taking note of time had not Amy
remembered that it was our dinner-hour. We took our leave, and met Mrs.
Leare on the staircase ascending to her apartment. She greeted Amy with
as much effusion as was compatible with her ideas of fashion, and said
she was "right glad" to hear we had been passing the morning with
Hermione.

"I wish you would come very often. I like her to see English girls: you
do her so much good, Amy.--Mr. Farquhar, we shall hope to see you often
too. I have a little reception here every Sunday evening."

With that she continued her course up stairs, and we descended to the
porte-cochere.

She was a faded woman, "dressed to death," as Amy phrased it, and none
of my people had a good word for her.

"The Leares are rolling in riches, I believe," remarked my father, "and
an American who is rich has no hereditary obligations to absorb his
wealth, so that it becomes all 'spending-money,' as Miss Hermione says.
The head of the family--King Leare I call him--stays at home in some
sort of a counting-room in New York and makes money, giving Mrs. Leare
and Miss Hermione _carte blanche_ to spend it on any follies they
please. I never heard anything exactly wrong concerning Mrs. Leare, but
she does not seem to me the woman to be trusted with that very nice
young daughter. I feel great pity for Miss Leare."

"Miss Leare has plenty of sense and character," said my mother: "I do
not think her mother's que