g her great beauty too.

"Precious stones!" said he lightly, when she had done speaking. "I do
not know whether they are broad enough for such a superstructure as you
would build on them." And then he turned to Mrs. Wishart again, and
they left the subject and plunged into a variety of other subjects
where Lois scarce could follow them.

What did they not talk of! Mr. Dillwyn, it appeared, had lately
returned from abroad, where Mrs. Wishart had also formerly lived for
some time; and now they went over a multitude of things and people
familiar to both of them, but of which Lois did not even know the
names. She listened, however, eagerly; and gleaned, as an eager
listener generally may, a good deal. Places, until now unheard of, took
a certain form and aspect in Lois's imagination; people were discerned,
also in imagination, as being of different types and wonderfully
different habits and manners of life from any Lois knew at home, or had
even seen in New York. She heard pictures talked of, and wondered what
sort of a world that art world might be, in which Mr. Dillwyn was so
much at home. Lois had never seen any pictures in her life which were
much to her. And the talk about countries sounded strange. She knew
where Germany was on the map, and could give its boundaries no doubt
accurately; but all this gossip about the Rhineland and its vineyards
and the vintages there and in France, sounded fascinatingly novel. And
she knew where Italy was on the map; but Italy's skies, and soft air,
and mementos of past times of history and art, were unknown; and she
listened with ever-quickening attention. The result of the whole at
last was a mortifying sense that she knew nothing. These people, her
friend and this other, lived in a world of mental impressions and
mentally stored-up knowledge, which seemed to make their life
unendingly broader and richer than her own. Especially the gentleman.
Lois observed that it was constantly he who had something new to tell
Mrs. Wishart, and that in all the ground they went over, he was more at
home than she. Indeed, Lois got the impression that Mr. Dillwyn knew
the world and everything in it better than anybody she had ever seen.
Mr. Caruthers was extremely _au fait_ in many things; Lois had the
thought, not the word; but Mr. Dillwyn was an older man and had seen
much more. He was terrifically wise in it all, she thought; and by
degrees she got a kind of awe of him. A little of Mrs. Wishart to