remely
rude."

The young girl looked at him a moment.

"Yes, I think it would. But what you have done is ruder."

"It is a hard case!" said Longueville. "What could I have done, then,
decently?"

"It 's a beautiful drawing," murmured the elder lady, handing the thing
back to Longueville. Her daughter, meanwhile, had not even glanced at
it.

"You might have waited till I should go away," this argumentative young
person continued.

Longueville shook his head.

"I never lose opportunities!"

"You might have sketched me afterwards, from memory."

Longueville looked at her, smiling.

"Judge how much better my memory will be now!"

She also smiled a little, but instantly became serious.

"For myself, it 's an episode I shall try to forget. I don't like the
part I have played in it."

"May you never play a less becoming one!" cried Longueville. "I hope
that your mother, at least, will accept a memento of the occasion." And
he turned again with his sketch to her companion, who had been listening
to the girl's conversation with this enterprising stranger, and looking
from one to the other with an air of earnest confusion. "Won't you do me
the honor of keeping my sketch?" he said. "I think it really looks like
your daughter."

"Oh, thank you, thank you; I hardly dare," murmured the lady, with a
deprecating gesture.

"It will serve as a kind of amends for the liberty I have taken,"
Longueville added; and he began to remove the drawing from its paper
block.

"It makes it worse for you to give it to us," said the young girl.

"Oh, my dear, I am sure it 's lovely!" exclaimed her mother. "It 's
wonderfully like you."

"I think that also makes it worse!"

Longueville was at last nettled. The young lady's perversity was perhaps
not exactly malignant; but it was certainly ungracious. She seemed to
desire to present herself as a beautiful tormentress.

"How does it make it worse?" he asked, with a frown.

He believed she was clever, and she was certainly ready. Now, however,
she reflected a moment before answering.

"That you should give us your sketch," she said at last.

"It was to your mother I offered it," Longueville observed.

But this observation, the fruit of his irritation, appeared to have no
effect upon the young girl.

"Is n't it what painters call a study?" she went on. "A study is of use
to the painter himself. Your justification would be that you should keep
your sketch, and that it might