are say I
am fickle. And I want some one able to correct any foreign ignorance
that may linger about me."

"As if you did not know you were perfect and altogether charming, and
that your little foreign airs and graces are the things we all fall
down and worship!" laughs Laura. "I could almost find it in my heart to
wish I were a dowager."

"You can come without the added dignity of years. I have a motherly
interest in you. If you were not married I dare say I should 'ransack
the ages' for some one fit and proper, and turn into a match-maker."

"You had better take Marcia in hand; I think of doing it myself. Gert
is past hope."

"Marcia is not so bad," says madame, reflectively, "if only she would
not set up for a genius. It is the great fault of young American women.
Abroad everything is done, even studying music, under an assumed name,
but one does not go on the stage."

"Marcia is a fool," says Laura, with most unsisterly decision.

"Well, about your mother. You think I may write. I trespassed upon your
hospitality so long----"

"Oh, whatever should I have done without you! And there is another
funny thing," says Laura irrelevantly. "Mrs. Floyd has taken up
literature. She copies and translates and does no end of work for the
professor; and he has hired her cottage, where they all do some
Bohemianish housekeeping, I believe."

Madame raises her delicate eyebrows a trifle. "She must be well
trained, then," she makes answer. "She may do admirably for your
brother, after all."

"Hem!" retorts Laura, "what does a little writing amount to? Only it
_is_ queer."

Madame never indulges in any strictures on the new wife, rather she
treats the matter as an untoward accident to be made the best of; she
is not so short-sighted as to show the slightest malice.

Then she takes Laura back to the reception and is interested in hearing
who was there and what was done, who was a bore, who is worth inviting,
and so on, until Laura finds she has stayed unconscionably. After her
visitor is gone she writes the daintiest of epistles, quite as a loving
daughter might. She means to sap all the outer fortifications; she even
considers if it will not be wise to invite Marcia some time.

To say that Mrs. Grandon is delighted is a weak word. Nothing has ever
so taken her by storm since Laura's engagement. She carries the letter
to Floyd. Had madame foreseen this?

"Of course you will go." His eyes are on the letter, where every s