A sudden caprice impelled her, in the privacy of her bedroom that
evening, to draw his portrait for Peter Erwin. The complacency of New
York men was most amusing, she wrote, and the amount of slang they used
would have been deemed vulgar in St. Louis. Nevertheless, she liked
people to be sure of themselves, and there was something "insolent" about
New York which appealed to her. Peter, when he read that letter, seemed
to see Mr. Howard Spence in the flesh; or arrayed, rather, in the kind of
cloth alluringly draped in the show-windows of fashionable tailors. For
Honora, all unconsciously, wrote literature. Literature was invented
before phonographs, and will endure after them. Peter could hear Mr.
Spence talk, for a part of that gentleman's conversation--a
characteristic part--was faithfully transcribed. And Peter detected a
strain of admiration running even through the ridicule.

Peter showed that letter to Aunt Mary, whom it troubled, and to Uncle
Tom, who laughed over it. There was also a lifelike portrait of the
Vicomte, followed by the comment that he was charming, but very French;
but the meaning of this last, but quite obvious, attribute remained
obscure. He was possessed of one of the oldest titles and one of the
oldest chateaux in France. (Although she did not say so, Honora had this
on no less authority than that of the Vicomte himself.) Mrs. Holt--with
her Victorian brooch and ear-rings and her watchful delft-blue eyes that
somehow haunted one even when she was out of sight, with her ample bosom
and the really kind heart it contained--was likewise depicted; and Mr.
Holt, with his dried bread, and his garden which Honora wished Uncle Tom
could see, and his prayers that lacked imagination. Joshua and his cows,
Robert and his forest, Susan and her charities, the Institution, jolly
Mrs. Joshua and enigmatical Mrs. Robert--all were there: and even a
picture of the dinner-party that evening, when Honora sat next to a young
Mr. Patterson with glasses and a studious manner, who knew George Hanbury
at Harvard. The other guests were a florid Miss Chamberlin, whose person
loudly proclaimed possessions, and a thin Miss Longman, who rented one of
the Silverdale cottages and sketched.

Honora was seeing life. She sent her love to Peter, and begged him to
write to her.

The next morning a mysterious change seemed to have passed over the
members of the family during the night. It was Sunday. Honora, when she
left her ro