listening to music that makes you wish you were better,
whether you take in its full meaning or not."

This was a long speech for Lady Alice. Her mother looked at her in
amazement. There certainly must be something out of the ordinary in this
peculiar American cousin to wake Alice from her customary languor.

Alice smiled at her mother's surprise.

"Strange, isn't it, Mother?" she asked, half ashamed of her unusual
enthusiasm. "But it's true. She'd help some good man to be a power in
the world. I feel it so often when she talks. I didn't know women ever
thought such things as she does. I-I-I believe we can trust her, Mother,
to steer clear of everything!"

"I hope so, Alice; I am sure I hope so, but--I don't know. I am afraid
it was a mistake to keep her so much alone. It gives her more unreal
ideas of life than actual contact with the world would have done."

Opal Ledoux left the window and sauntered down the long drawing-room
toward the table where the speakers were sitting.

"What are you talking about?--me?"

The cousins were surprised and showed it by blushing guiltily.

Opal laughed merrily.

"Dreary subject for a dreary day! I hope you found it more interesting
than I have!" And she stretched her small figure to its utmost height,
which was not a bit above five foot, and shrugged her shoulders lazily.

"What are you reading, Opal?" asked Lady Fletcher, in an effort to
change the subject, looking with some interest at the volume that the
girl carried.

"Don't ask me--all twaddle and moonshine! I ought not to waste my
valuable time with such trash. There isn't a real character in the book,
not one. When I write a book, and I presume I shall some time, if I live
long enough, I shall put people into it who have real flesh and blood in
them and who do startling things. But I'll have to live it all first!"

"Live the startling things, Opal? God forbid!"

"Surely! Why not?"

And Opal dropped listlessly into a chair, tossed the offending book on a
table, and taking a cup of tea from the hand of her cousin, began to sip
it with an air of languid indifference, which sat strangely on her
youthful, almost childlike figure.

"By the way, Alice," she asked carelessly, "who was the young man who
stared at us so rudely last night as we drove away from the theatre?"

"I saw no young man staring, Opal. Where was he?"

"Why, he stood on the pavement, waiting, I suppose, for his carriage,
and as we drove away he