. She was in
the habit of coming out to the Hemlock Farm for a day's holiday, and went
directly to her own room as though she were at home. When she stepped
presently out on the porch, where the gentlemen had gone to smoke, a soft
black silk showing every line of her supple figure, glimpses of the rounded
arms revealed with every movement of the loose sleeves, one or two thick
green leaves in her light hair--ugly, quiet, friendly--they all felt more
at home than they had done before. There was a pitcher of punch by the
captain's elbow: she tasted it, threw in a dash of liquor, poured him out a
glass and sat down beside him, and he felt that a gap was comfortably
filled.

"You have turned your back on Philadelphia, they tell me, Miss Fleming,"
complained Judge Rhodes. "New York sucks in all the young blood of the
country--the talent and energy."

"Oh, I came simply to sell my wares. New York is my market, but
Philadelphia will always be home to me," in her peculiar pathetic voice. "I
left good friends there," with one of her bewildering glances straight into
the judge's beady eyes, at which his flabby face was suffused with heat.

"You do not forget your friends, that's certain," he said, lowering his
voice. "That was a delicate compliment, sending my portrait back to the
Exhibition. I felt it very much, I assure you."

Cornelia bowed silently. Neither she nor the judge said anything about the
round-numbered cheque which he had sent her for it. In the moonlight they
preferred to let the affair stand on a sentimental basis.

Mr. Van Ness meanwhile eyed Miss Fleming's pose and rounded figure with a
watery gleam of complacency.

"An exceptional woman," was his verdict. He turned the conversation to art,
and asked innumerable questions with a profound humility. Cornelia replied
eagerly, until the fact crept out from the judge that there was not an
aesthetic dogma nor a gallery in the world with which he was not familiar.
Then to pottery, in which field his modesty was as profound, until the
judge pushed him, as it were, to a corner, when he acknowledged himself the
possessor of a few "nice bits."

"I have some old Etruscan pieces which I should like you to see, Miss
Fleming," with his mild, deprecating cough, "and a bit of Capo di Monte,
and the only real specimen of Henri Deux in the country."

"I must see them," emphatically. "Where are your cabinets?"

"Oh, nowhere," with a shrug. "My poor little specimens have n