* * * * *

We have spent more than five, a great deal more--thirty, forty, perhaps,
and our harmony is still unbroken, _uncracked_ even. We have sat in awed
and chastened silence before the divine meekness of the Sistine Madonna.
We have turned away in disgust from Jordain's brutish "Triumphs of
Silenus," and tiresome repetitions of Hercules in drink. We have admired
the exuberance of St. Mary of Egypt's locks, and irreverently compared
them to the effects of Mrs. Allen's "World-wide Hair Restorer." We have
observed that the forehead of Holbein's great Virgin is too high to
please _us_, and made many other connoisseur-like remarks. I have
pointed out to Mr. Musgrave the Saint Catherine which has a look of
Barbara, and we have both grown rather tired of St. Sebastian, stuck as
full of darts as a pin-cushion of pins. Now we are sitting down resting
our eyes and our strained powers of criticism, and have fallen into easy
talk.

"I am glad you are coming to dine at our _table d'hote_ to-night," say
I, in a friendly tone. "It will be nice for the general to have an
Englishman to talk to. I hope you will sit by him; he has been so much
used to men all his life that he must get rather sick of having nothing
but the chatter of one woman to depend upon."

"At least he has no one but himself to blame for that," replies the
young fellow, laughing. "I suppose it was his own doing."

"How do you know that?" cry I, gayly, and then the recollection of my
_hint_ to Sir Roger--a remembrance that always makes me rather
hot--comes over me, and causes me to turn my head quickly away with a
red blush. "It certainly _has_ a look of Barbara," I say, glancing
toward the Saint Catherine, and rushing quickly into another subject.

"Has it?" he says, apparently unaware of the rapidity of my transition.
"Then I wish I knew Barbara."

I laugh.

"I dare say you do."

"She is not much like you, I suppose?" he says, turning from the saint's
straight and strict Greek profile to the engaging irregularity of mine.

"Not exactly," say I, with emphasis. "Ah!" (in a tone of prospective
triumph), "wait till you see her!"

"I am afraid that I shall have to wait some time."

"The Brat--that is one of my brothers, you know--is the one like me," I
say, becoming diffuse, as I always do, when the theme of my family is
started; "we _are_ like! We can see it ourselves."

"Is he one of the thick-skinned six that you told me abou