herself as absorbed as an actress in a
new and congenial role.

"After all," she thought, "clever women make themselves over in great
part, uprooting here, adopting there, and as we have so little chance to
_be_ anything, there is a good deal to be got out of it. If one cannot
be a genius one can at least be an artist. I have never had much cause
to be as direct as stage lightning, but as I enjoyed it I suppose I may
infer that even brutal frankness is not foreign to my nature. Perhaps,
like father, I am a snob at heart and liked the sensation of a sort of
artistic alliance with the British aristocracy. Well, if I develop
snobbery I can root out that weed--or persuade myself that some other
motive is at the base of a disposition to adopt any of the
characteristics of this people: a woman can persuade herself of any
sophistry she chooses. Not for anything would I be a man. Absolutely to
accept the facts of life, even the ugly unvarnished fact itself, and at
the same time to invent one's own soul-tunes--that is to be a woman and
free!"

A printed square of card-board on her writing-table had informed her
that the dinner-hour was half-past eight. She looked at her watch. It
was five minutes to the time. Once more she peered into the glass, shook
out her skirts, then sought a door in a far and dusky corner. It opened
upon a long dimly lit corridor which led into another at right angles,
and Isabel presently found herself at the head of a staircase similar to
the one on her side of the house. Here, too, the walls were hung with
portraits and landscapes, and as far down as the eye could follow; but
after glancing over them for a moment with the recurring weariness of
one who has seen too many pictures in the hard ways of European travel,
her eyes lit and lingered on the figure of a young man who stood on the
landing, his back to her, examining, with a certain tensity, a canvas on
a level with his eyes.

"Uncle Hiram--John Elton Cecil Gwynne! What a likeness and what a
difference!"

The young Englishman's hair, pale in color and very smooth, was worn
longer than the fashion, the ends lilting. As he turned slowly at the
rustle of descending skirts, this eccentricity and his colorless skin
made him look the pale student rather than the gallant soldier, the best
fighter on the hustings that England had seen for five-and-twenty years.
As Isabel walked carefully down the slippery stair she veiled her eyes
to hide the wonder i