their end there. A loose tea-gown clung in long folds about her. A
dull colored thing, save for the two broad bands of sapphire plush
hanging straight before, from throat to toe. Melicent was plainly
dejected; not troubled, nor sad, only dejected, and very much bored; a
condition that had made her yawn several times while she looked at the
falling snow.

She was philosophizing a little. Wondering if the world this morning
were really the unpleasant place that it appeared, or if these
conditions of unpleasantness lay not rather within her own mental
vision; a train of thought that might be supposed to have furnished
her some degree of entertainment had she continued in its pursuit. But
she chose rather to dwell on her causes of unhappiness, and thus
convince herself that that unhappiness was indeed outside of her and
around her and not by any possibility to be avoided or circumvented.
There lay now a letter in her desk from David, filled with admonitions
if not reproof which she felt to be not entirely unjust, on the
disagreeable subject of Expenses. Looking around the pretty room she
conceded to herself that here had been temptations which she could not
reasonably have been expected to withstand. The temptation to lodge
herself in this charming little flat; furnish it after her own liking;
and install that delightful little old poverty-stricken English woman
as keeper of Proprieties, with her irresistible white starched caps
and her altogether delightful way of inquiring daily after that "poor,
dear, kind Mr. Hosmer." It had all cost a little more than she had
foreseen. But the worst of it, the very worst of it was, that she had
already begun to ask herself if, for instance, it were not very
irritating to see every day, that same branching palm, posing by the
window, in that same yellow jardiniere. If those draperies that
confronted her were not becoming positively offensive in the monotony
of their solemn folds. If the cuteness and quaintness of the
poverty-stricken little English woman were not after all a source of
entertainment that she would willingly forego on occasion. The answer
to these questions was a sigh that ended in another yawn.

Then Melicent threw herself into a low easy chair by the table, took
up her visiting book, and bending lazily with her arms resting on her
knees, began to turn over its pages. The names which she saw there
recalled to her mind an entertainment at which she had assisted on the