Adelaide Kellinger, the
widow of his cousin and favorite boyhood-companion, Ralph Kellinger.
Adelaide was now thirty-five years of age, an agreeable woman, tall,
slender, and exquisitely dressed--a woman who made people forget that an
arm should be round, or a cheek red, when her slim, amber-colored
gracefulness was present with them. Adelaide's house was Stephen's one
lounging-place. Here he came to hear her talk over last evening's party,
and here he delivered fewer of those concise apropos remarks for which
he was celebrated, and which had been the despair of a long series of
young ladies in turn; for what can you do with a man who, on every
occasion, even the most unexpected, has calmly ready for you a neat
sentence, politely delivered, like the charmingly folded small parcels
which the suave dry-goods clerk hands to you across the counter? Stephen
was never in a hurry to bring out these remarks of his; on the contrary,
he always left every pause unbroken for a perceptible half moment or
two, as if waiting for some one else to speak. The unwary, therefore,
were often entrapped into the idea that he was slow or unprepared; and
the unwary made a mistake, as the more observing among them soon
discovered.

Adelaide Kellinger had studied her cousin for years. The result of her
studies was as follows: She paid, outwardly, no especial attention to
him, and she remained perfectly natural herself. This last was a
difficult task. If he asked a question, she answered with the plainest
truth she could imagine; if he asked an opinion, she gave the one she
would have given to her most intimate woman-friend (if she had had one);
if she was tired, she did not conceal it; if she was out of temper, she
said disagreeable, sharp-edged things. She was, therefore, perfectly
natural? On the contrary, she was extremely unnatural. A charming woman
does not go around at the present day in a state of nature mentally any
more than physically; politeness has become a necessary clothing to her.
Adelaide Kellinger never spoke to her cousin without a little preceding
pause, during which she thought over what she was going to say; and, as
Stephen was slow to speak also, their conversations were ineffective,
judged from a dramatic point of view. But Adelaide judged by certain
broad facts, and left drama to others. Stephen liked to be with her; and
he was a creature of habit. She intended that he should continue to like
to be with her; and she relied