ity was rather that
of the owl.

"You talked a great deal to Mr. Langholm," said she, sounding her rebuke
rather cleverly in the key of mere statement of fact. "Have you read his
books, Mrs. Steel?"

"Some of them," said Rachel; "haven't you?"

"Oh, no, I never read novels, unless it be George Eliot, or in these
days Mrs. Humphrey Ward. It's such waste of time when there are
Browning, Ruskin, and Carlyle to read and read again. I know I shouldn't
like Mr. Langholm's; I am sure they are dreadfully uncultured and
sensational."

"But I like sensation," Rachel said. "I like to be taken out of myself."

"So you suggested he should write a novel about Mrs. Minchin!"

"No, I didn't suggest it," said Rachel, hurriedly; but the beady brown
eyes were upon her, and she felt herself reddening horribly as she
spoke.

"You seemed to know all about her," said the aquiline lady. "I'm not in
the habit of reading such cases. But I must really look this one up."

CHAPTER XII

EPISODE OF THE INVISIBLE VISITOR

That was something like a summer, as the saying is, and for once they
could say it even on the bleak northern spurs of the Delverton Hills.
There were days upon days when that minor chain looked blue and noble as
the mountains of Alsace and hackneyed song, seen with an envious eye
from the grimy outskirts of Northborough, and when from the hills
themselves the only blot upon the fair English landscape was the pall of
smoke that always overhung the town. On such days Normanthorpe House
justified its existence in the north of England instead of in southern
Italy; the marble hall, so chill to the tread at the end of May, was the
one really cool spot in the district by the beginning of July; and
nowhere could a more delightful afternoon be spent by those who cared to
avail themselves of a general invitation.

The Steels had not as yet committed themselves to formal hospitality of
the somewhat showy character that obtained in the neighborhood, but they
kept open house for all who liked to come, and whom they themselves
liked well enough to ask in the first instance. And here (as in some
other matters) this curious pair discovered a reflex identity of taste,
rare enough in the happiest of conventional couples, but a gratuitous
irony in the makers of a merely nominal marriage. Their mutual feelings
towards each other were a quantity unknown to either; but about a third
person they were equally outspoken and unanimous.