partment somewhere, of
course I won't insist on his coming to us as he ought to, but to abandon
us in this manner makes me almost indignant. Besides, it's having
anything but a salutary effect on Eileen."

"What effect is it having on Eileen?" inquired Boots curiously.

"Oh, I don't know," said Nina, coming perilously close to a pout; "but I
see symptoms--indeed I do, Boots!--symptoms of shirking the winter's
routine. It's to be a gay season, too, and it's only her second. The
idea of a child of that age informing me that she's had enough of the
purely social phases of this planet! Did you ever hear anything like it?
One season, if you please--and she finds it futile, stale, and
unprofitable to fulfil the duties expected of her!"

Boots began to laugh, but it was no laughing matter to Nina, and she
said so vigorously.

"It's Philip's fault. If he'd stand by us this winter she'd go
anywhere--and enjoy it, too. Besides, he's the only man able to satisfy
the blue-stocking in her between dances. But he's got this obstinate
mania for seclusion, and he seldom comes near us, and it's driving
Eileen into herself, Boots--and every day I catch her hair slumping over
her ears--and once I discovered a lead-pencil behind 'em!--and a
monograph on the Ming dynasty in her lap, all marked up with notes! Oh,
Boots! Boots! I've given up all hopes of that brother of mine for
her--but she could marry anybody, if she chose--_anybody_!--and she
could twist the entire social circus into a court of her own and
dominate everything. Everybody knows it; everybody says it! . . . And
look at her!--indifferent, listless, scarcely civil any longer to her
own sort, but galvanised into animation the moment some impossible
professor or artist or hairy scientist flutters batlike into a
drawing-room where he doesn't belong unless he's hired to be amusing!
And that sounds horridly snobbish, I know; I _am_ a snob about Eileen,
but not about myself because it doesn't harm me to make round
wonder-eyes at a Herr Professor or gaze intensely into the eyes of an
artist when he's ornamental; it doesn't make my hair come down over my
ears to do that sort of thing, and it doesn't corrupt me into slinking
off to museum lectures or spending mornings prowling about the Society
Library or the Chinese jades in the Metropolitan--"

Boots's continuous and unfeigned laughter checked the pretty, excited
little matron, and after a moment she laughed, too.

"Dear Boots,"