n how dear they all were to her. For the time being she unbent,
and became a child herself in the interest she took in their prattle and
mirth. A true mother and happy children.

I discovered that each department of this handsome home was under the
care of a professional artist. I remarked to my hostess that I had
supposed her home was the expression of her own taste.

"So it is," she replied; "but it requires an equally well educated taste
to carry out my designs. The arrangement and ornamentation of my grounds
were suggested by me, and planned and executed by my landscape artist."

After supper we repaired to the general sitting-room. The eldest
daughter had been deeply absorbed in a book before we came in. She
closed and left it upon a table. I watched for an opportunity to
carelessly pick it up and examine it. It was a novel I felt sure, for
she appeared to resign it reluctantly out of courtesy to her guest. I
might, from it, gather some clue to the mystery of the male sex. I took
up the book and opened it. It was The Conservation of Force and The
Phenomena of Nature. I laid it down with a sigh of discomfiture.

The next evening, my hostess gave a small entertainment, and what was my
amazement, not to say offense, to perceive the cook, the chamber-maid,
and in fact all the servants in the establishment, enter and join in the
conversation and amusement. The cook was asked to sing, for, with the
exception of myself--and I tried to conceal it--no one appeared to take
umbrage at her presence. She sat down to the piano and sang a pretty
ballad in a charming manner. Her voice was cultivated and musical, as
are all the voices in Mizora, but it was lacking in the qualities that
make a great singer, yet it had a plaintive sweetness that was very
attractive.

I was dumbfounded at her presumption. In my country such a thing is
unknown as a servant entertaining guests in such a capacity, and
especially among people of my rank and position in the world.

I repelled some advances she made me with a hauteur and coldness that it
mortified me afterward to remember. Instead of being _my_ inferior, I
was her's, and she knew it; but neither by look, tone nor action did she
betray her consciousness of it. I had to acknowledge that her hands were
more delicately modeled than mine, and her bearing had a dignity and
elegance that might have been envied by the most aristocratic dame of my
own land. Knowing that the Mizora people were p