curiously feminine refinement.
Expressing Miss Marion Walbrook as it did, it made no provision for
the coarse and lounging habits of men, Miss Walbrook's world being a
woman's world. All was straight, slender, erect, and hard in the way
that women like for occasions of formality. It was evident, too, that
Miss Walbrook's women friends were serious, if civilized. There was no
place here for the slapdash, smoking girl of the present day.

The tone which caught your eye was that of dusky gold, thrown out
first from the Chinese rug in imperial yellow, but reflected from a
score of surfaces in rich old satinwood, discreetly mounted in ormolu.
On the French-paneled walls there was but one picture, Sargent's
portrait of Miss Walbrook herself, an exquisite creature, with the
straight, thin lines of her own table legs and the grace which makes
no appeal to men. Not that she was of the type colloquially known as a
"back number," or a person to be ignored. On the contrary, she was a
pioneer of the day after to-morrow, the herald of an epoch when the
blundering of men would be replaced by superior intelligence.

You must know these facts with regard to Miss Walbrook, the aunt, in
order to understand Miss Walbrook, the niece. The latter was not the
pupil of the former, since she was too intense and high-handed to be
the pupil of anyone. Nevertheless she had caught from her wealthy and
public-spirited relative certain prepossessions which guided her
points of view.

Without having beauty, Miss Barbara Walbrook impressed you as Someone,
and as Someone dressed by the most expensive houses in New York. For
beauty her lips were too full, her eyes too slanting, and her
delicate profile too much like that of an ancient Egyptian princess.
The princess was perhaps what was most underscored in her character,
the being who by some indefinable divine right is entitled to her own
way. She didn't specially claim her way; she only couldn't bear not
getting it.

Rashleigh Allerton, being of the easy-going type, had no objection to
her getting her own way, but he sometimes rebelled against her manner
of taking it. So rebelling now, he tried to give her to understand
that he was master.

"If you marry me, Barbe, you'll have to take me as I am--disgusting
habits and all."

It was the wrong tone, the whip to the filly that should have been
steered gently.

"But I suppose there's no law to compel me to marry you."

"Only the law of honor."