LADY PATON was a thin, graceful woman, her slenderness emphasized, like her daughter’s, by a very small head. Since her husband’s death she had worn black, and even now it seemed to invade her delicate whiteness rather overwhelmingly, rising closely about her throat, falling over her fragile hands, enfolding her with a soft solemnity. Her white hair was smoothed thickly under the transparent cambrics of an exquisite cap, and framed the sweetness of a faded face, in profile like Camelia’s. Camelia’s eyes were her father’s, and her smile; Lady Paton’s eyes were round like a child’s, and her smile half-frightened, half-explanatory. With all the gentlewoman’s mild dignity, her look was timid, as though it besought indulgence for a lifelong sense of insignificance, a look that aroused in Perior his grimmest scorn for a world in which such flower-like moral loveliness is inevitably victimized by garish egotisms. He had known Sir Charles, a charming companion, a good fellow—in the somewhat widely licensed sense the term implies, but not fit to untie his wife’s shoe-strings when it came to a comparison. Camelia now had stepped upon her father’s undeserved pedestal, and Perior, watching the new epoch of incense-burning, had smiled more and more grimly. He was devoted to Lady Paton, and had been so since the days when a raw, sensitive, high-strung youth, fresh from college, her Madonna head had roused in him poetical idealizations, and her husband’s gay indifference a chafing resentment. With years he had grown rather fond of Sir Charles, could make allowances for him, and, too, had no longer idealized Lady Paton; but though he now saw her, sweet but dull, lovely in unselfishness, yet weak in all except a submission noble in its own way, the fragrant charm still stirred him with an almost paternal tenderness, a pity, even a reverence. She was too obtuse to see her own cramped and imprisoned life, but he saw it, and her unconsciousness was part of the pathos. He was very fond of her, and she of him, so that with all his protective partisanship there was, too, a willing filial deference.

This little corner of appreciation and affection was the softest spot in Perior’s character. He took both her hands now and said, looking at her with a whimsical gentleness, “So you are back at last! And glad to be back, too, are you not?”

“Oh, very. And Camelia seems to like it so much,” she smiled round at her daughter; “she was beginning to look quite fagged; already the country has done her good.”

Camelia smiled back with a humoring lightness.

Mary Fairleigh stood quietly behind her aunt. Her expressionless face certainly did suggest a lacteal dulness. The Fairleighs were not responsible for her short nose and clumsily-cut mouth. Impecunious Maurice Fairleigh, third son, had “done for himself” when he married his younger sisters’ nursery governess. Maurice had no money—and not many brains, and poor Miss Hockey had neither brains nor beauty, nor family nor money. Her flaxen hair and vacant blue eyes captured Maurice’s vagrant fancy during a lazy summer. He was very young, that fact was the only excuse possible; but, as the Fairleighs said, there was no accounting for Maurice’s folly. Maurice himself, after a very little time, could no longer account for it. He was a good-natured fellow, and his wonder at himself did not become too painfully apparent to his wife; but the short years of their married life were by no means a success. Maurice was very delicate, and the struggle to make both ends meet was but grudgingly aided by disapproving relatives. Lady Paton, only, was sympathetic, practically sympathetic too; but during the greater part of Maurice’s matrimonial venture she was in India, and, as the other Fairleighs said, Angelica never had the wit to resent anything. Maurice died at Davos-Platz, and Mrs. Fairleigh, when her daughter was sixteen, departed her seemingly very pointless existence. Her last years had been sweetened by Lady Paton’s devoted kindness, and she left Mary to this guardian angel. Since that time Mary had lived at Enthorpe Lodge; a grave, good little girl, solemnly submissive to her cousin, painstaking in dutiful gratitude toward her aunt. Camelia had always found this gratitude irritating, and Mary’s manner—as of one on whom Providence had laid the patiently-borne burden of obscurity and dependence, very vexing. Camelia intended as little as her mother to recognize a difference, and did not realize that her own dominant characteristics necessitated Mary’s non-resistance.

She laughed at Mary’s gravity, tried to tease her out of her stolid acceptance of the rÔle of poor relation, but, inevitably, she came to treat Mary with the tolerant carelessness she seemed only to expect. As for Lady Paton, she never surmised about Mary, nor analyzed her. Lady Paton accepted people and things as they appeared, and without conjecture. Mary was a dear, good girl. It was indeed impossible that her uninteresting virtues should arouse enthusiasm, and her aunt’s appreciation from its very fulness was calmly unemotional.

Lady Paton having become in these latter days a sort of decorative adjunct to her daughter—for Camelia used her mother to the very best advantage,—lace caps, sweetness and all,—it was upon Mary that the duller duties fell. Mary managed bills and servants, and household matters; wrote little notes, ran little errands, chose embroidery silks, and sent for the books to Mudie’s,—the tender books with happy matrimonial endings that Lady Paton liked. She read these books aloud, and talked to her aunt—as Camelia never did, never could. Lady Paton listened to her daughter, but she and Mary talked about her. Mary’s conversation required no adjustment of amazed faculties, no quelling of old-fashioned alarms, nor acceptance of a wondering incompetence.

The little prattle of gardening and gowns, and Camelia’s doings went on happily, unless hushed in an absorbed observance of that young heroine herself,—flinging pretty missiles of speech far above the heads of her mother and cousin.

Both dull dears; such was Camelia’s realistic inner comment, but Mary was an earthenware dear, and Mamma translucent porcelain. Camelia, who appreciated and loved all dainty perfection, appreciated and loved her mother, with much the same love that she would have given a slender white vase of priceless ware, displayed on a stand of honor in her knowingly grouped drawing-room. She was a distinctly creditable and decorative Mamma. As for Mary, she was not decorative; a harmless, necessary hot water jug.

Camelia, now, as her mother spoke to Perior, went to her side and gave the muslin that fell over her shoulder a little touch and settling.

“You have had a nice walk round the garden?” she said, smiling, “your cheek is just the pink of a sweet-pea.”

“And how are you, Mary?” Perior asked, turning to Miss Fairleigh. “You might have more color I think.”

“Mary has a headache,” said Lady Paton, the fluttering smile with which she had received her daughter’s commendation fading, “I think she often has them and says nothing.”

“You must play tennis with the Mappuck girls. You need more exercise,” Perior continued. “They are at it vigorously from morning till night.”

“Oh—really,” Mary protested, “it is only Aunt Angelica’s kindness—I am quite well.”

“And no one must dare be otherwise in this house,” Camelia added. “Go and play tennis at once, Mary. I don’t approve of headaches.” Mary smiled a modest, decorous little smile.

“Nor do I,” said Perior, and then as Lady Paton had taken a chair near her work-table, he sat down beside her, while Mary sank from her temporary prominence, and, near the window, took up some sewing. Camelia remained near her, looking out at the smooth green stretches of the lawn, lending half an ear to the talk behind her, but keeping up at the same time a kindly little flow of question and reply with her cousin. How were the flowers getting on? and the hay making? Had she seen that morning her poor village people? The questions were rather perfunctory; and while she spoke Camelia aided the faltering march of a burnished little beetle up the window, and helped him out on to the fragrant branch of syringa that brushed the pane.

“I hear that you are embarked on a season of parties,” said Perior to Lady Paton.

“Yes, Camelia has so many friends. She thought she would like it here if she could keep it gay with people.”

“You will like it too. You were lonely last winter.”

“Ah, Camelia was not here; but I was not lonely, Michael; you were too kind for that; and I had Mary. You don’t think Camelia looks thin, Michael?” She had always called the family friend by his Christian name. Perior had Irish ancestry. “She has been doing so much all spring—all winter too; I can’t understand how a delicate girl can press so many things into her life—and studying with it too; she must keep up with everything.”

“Ahead of everything,” Perior smiled.

“Yes, she is really so intellectual, Michael. You don’t think she looks badly?”

“She is as pretty a little pagan as ever,” said Perior, glancing at Miss Paton.

“A pagan!” Lady Paton looked rather alarmed. “You mean it, Michael? I have been troubled, but Camelia comes to church with me. It is you who are the pagan, Michael,” she added, finding the gentle retort with evident relief.

“Oh, I wasn’t speaking literally. I have no doubt that Camelia is a staunch church-woman,” he smiled to himself. Camelia was a brazen little conformist, when conformity was of service.

“No, not that. I don’t quite know. I have heard her talk of religion, with Mr. Ballenden, who writes those books, you know, scientific, atheistic books, and Camelia seemed quite to overpower him; the illusions of science, the claims of authority.” Lady Paton spoke with some little vagueness. “I did not quite follow it all; but he became very much excited. Controversial religion does not interest me, it confuses me. It is the inner change of heart, Michael,” she added with a mild glance of affection, “the reliance on the higher will that guides us, that has revealed itself to us.”

Perior looked somewhat gloomily on the ground. The thought of Lady Paton’s religion, and Camelia’s deft juggling with negatives, jarred upon him.

“You don’t agree with me, Michael?” Lady Paton asked timidly.

“Of course I do,” he said, looking up at her, “that is the only definition needful. We may interpret differently, from different points of view.”

“You would find, I think, greater peace in mine, Michael. May you come to it in time!”

They were both silent for a moment, and both looked presently at Camelia.

“She is so much admired, and so unspoiled by it. So frank, so unaffected. She is found so clever.”

“So she tells me,” Perior could not repress.

“And so humorous,” Lady Paton added, taking his smile in its kindest sense, “she says the most amusing things.”

“Mr. Perior,” said Camelia, turning rather abruptly, “if Mamma is singing my praises I give you leave to repress her sternly.” She joined them, standing behind Lady Paton’s chair, and, over her head, looking at Perior. “I know how trying such praises are, heard outside the family circle.”

“In which I hope I may include myself. I enjoy Lady Paton’s interpretation.”

“Mamma would not believe the biting intention of that speech. Cuff! cuff! cuff! Il me fait des misÈres, Mamma!”

Lady Paton’s smile went from one to the other.

“You have always teased Michael, Camelia, and he has always been so patient with you.”

“Every one is patient with me, because I am a good girl. ‘Be good, sweet maid—’ I believe in a moral universe,” and Camelia over her mother’s head wrinkled up her nose roguishly as she made the edifying statement. “Mamma,” she added, “where is my flock this morning? I fancied that you were shepherding some of them. I want to trot them out before Mr. Perior. I want to study his expression as Sir Harry and Mr. Merriman present themselves. Sir Harry the mere superlative of Mr. Merriman’s fatuity. I imagine that by some biological adaptation of function they use their brains for digestive purposes, since I am sure they never think with them.”

Lady Paton took refuge from a painful recognition of the inhospitable nature of these remarks in a vague smile. Lady Paton had a faculty for misunderstanding when either misunderstanding or disapproval was necessary. If Camelia hoped by her brisk personalities to shock her former preceptor she failed signally, for laughing appreciatively he asked, “And for what purpose were these latest sports of evolution imported?”

“Purpose! Could one pin a purpose to such aimless beings? They came because I like to have beautiful things about me, and, in their way, they are beautiful. Then, too, with a plant-like persistency they turn to the sun, and I do not flatter myself in owning that I am their sun. It would have been cruel to deny them the opportunity of basking.”

“The hunting, dancing, yachting species, I suppose.”

“Yes; their lives comprise a few more movements, but very few. It is a mere sort of rhythmic necessity.”

Perior laughed again, and his eyes met hers, as she leaned above her mother’s chair, in quite a twinkling mood.

Mary, near the window, paused in her stitching to look at them both with a seemingly bovine contemplation.

“And who are your other specimens?” asked Perior, less conscious perhaps than was Camelia of the purely dual nature of the conversation. She enjoyed this little display before him, and her enjoyment was emphasized by the presence of two alien listeners, it defined so well the fundamental intellectual sympathy.

Her smile rested on him as she replied, “You saw Mrs. Fox-Darriel.”

“Yes.”

“My only other guest just now is Gwendolen Holt, in appearance a youthful replica of Mrs. Fox-Darriel, but in character very embryotic.”

“A very pretty girl,” said Lady Paton, finding at last her little foothold.

“A spice of ugliness—just a something to jar the insignificant regularity of her face, would make her charming. As it is, her prettiness is a bore. You will stay to lunch, Alceste, and see these people?”

“I can’t say that you have made me anxious to see them.”

“Have you no taste for sociology?”

“You will stay and see us, however, will you not?” said Lady Paton, advancing now in happy security. “I want a long talk with you.”

“Then I stay.”

“His majesty stays!” Camelia murmured.

“How are the tenants getting on?” asked Lady Paton, taking from the table a soft mass of white wool, and beginning to knit. She was one of those women whose hands are always uselessly and prettily busy.

“Mary and I drove past the cottages yesterday—I wish you had come, dear—you would have liked to see them. So pretty they are, among their orchards, with such beautiful gardens full of flowers.”

“Yes, don’t they look well?” said Perior, much pleased. “I am trying to get the people to devote themselves to fruit and flower growing. It pays well.”

“And do the cottages themselves pay?” Camelia inquired mischievously. “I hear that, asking the ridiculous rents you do, you need never expect to make the smallest profit—or even get back the capital expended.”

“Thank Heaven the money-making epoch of my life is over,” said Perior, folding his arms and looking at her rather defiantly.

“But what blasphemy against political economy! Cottages that don’t pay! It’s very immoral, Alceste. It is feminine. You are pauperizing your tenants.”

“I don’t at all disbelieve that a little infusion of femininity into political economy would be a very good thing. Besides, the cottages will pay in the end.”

“The rents are lower than the lowest in the village. Lord Haversham was telling me about it yesterday.”

“Oh, Haversham!” laughed Perior.

“He was very plaintive. Said that times were hard enough for landlords as it was, without your charitable visionaries and your socialistic theories.”

“The two accusations don’t fit; but of the two I prefer the latter.”

“It is a mere egotistic diversion then?”

“Yes, a purely scientific experiment.”

“And your tenants have bath-tubs, I hear. Do they use them with Pears’ soap every morning?”

“I flatter myself that they are fairly clean. That alone is an interesting experiment. Dirt, I firmly believe to be the root of all evil.”

“Ah, we come down to the bed-rock of ethics at last, don’t we? Well, how is the laboratory getting on? Have you found traces of original sin in protoplasm?”

“I think I have spotted perverse tendencies,” Perior smiled.

“What a Calvinist you are!”

“Michael a Calvinist, my dear child!” Lady Paton looked up from her knitting in amazement.

“An illogical Calvinist. Instead of burning sinners he washes them! and I’ve no doubt that to some of them the latter form of purification is as disagreeable as the former. He puts them into model cottages, with Morris wall-papers.”

“I beg your pardon. No Morris wall-papers.”

“Camelia, my dear, how extravagantly you talk,” said Lady Paton, her smile reflecting happily Perior’s good-humor. Michael did not mind the teasing—liked it perhaps; and though she did not understand she smiled. Camelia sank down to a low chair beside her mother’s, and taking her mother’s hand she held it up solemnly, saying, “Mamma, Mr. Perior is a tissue of inconsistencies. He despises humanity; and he works for it like a nigger.”

“You are an impressionist, Camelia. Don’t lay on your primaries so glaringly.”

“Confess that you are a philanthropist, though an unwilling one.”

“I confess nothing,” said Perior, looking across the room at Mary with a smile that seemed to invite her participation in his well-borne baiting.

“Is not your life one long effort to help humanity—not la sainte canaille with you—but, and hence your inconsistency, the gross canaille, the dull, treacherous, diabolical canaille?”

“Not to hurt it, rather; and as one is oneself gross, dull, treacherous, and diabolical, that may well engage one’s energies. There would be less cant and more comfort in the world if we would merely avoid treading upon our neighbor’s corns. Let us cultivate the negative virtues. What do you say, Mary? You have a right to a strong opinion, since I never saw you hurt anybody.”

Mary, thus unexpectedly appealed to, started, grew red, and laughed an embarrassed and apprehensive laugh. Camelia cast a glance upon the long strip of rather foolish embroidery lengthening under her cousin’s fingers.

“My philosophy!” she declared. “People who make a row about things are such bores.”

Lady Paton, still smiling, quite at sea, but conscious of a pleasant atmosphere, bent her eyes upon an intricate turn in the futile garment upon which she was engaged.

“Do you avoid your neighbor’s corns, my young lady?” Perior inquired.

“I never think of such unpleasantnesses,” Camelia replied lightly. “As I haven’t any corns myself, I proceed upon the supposition that other people enjoy my immunity. If they don’t, why, that is their own fault—let them cut them and give up tight boots.”

Perior, looking on the floor, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped, laughed again.

“Little pagan!” he said.

“Frank, healthy paganism, an excellent thing. I don’t own to it, mind; but is not the soul in our modern sense a disease of the body?”

“Oh, Camelia!” said Lady Paton, looking up with eyes rounded. Camelia’s smile reassured her somewhat, and she glanced for its confirmation at Perior.

Mary Fairleigh, in her distant seat, carefully drew her silk about the contour of an alarming flower.

“Never mind, Lady Paton, she doesn’t shock me at all,” said Perior.

“I am glad of that, Michael; she will make herself misunderstood. Camelia dear, it is one o’clock. The others must be in the drawing-room. Shall we go there?”

“Willingly, Mamma. I’m very hungry. Did you order a good lunch, Mary?”

“I hope you will like it.” Mary paused in the act of neatly rolling up her work. “Fowls, asparagus——”

“Don’t,” Camelia interposed in mock horror; “the nicest part of a meal is unexpectedness!” She laughed at her cousin; but Mary, securing her work with a pin, murmured solemnly, “I am so sorry.”

“Mary, you are as silly as your own fowls!” cried Camelia; she gave her cousin’s flaxen head a pat, and then, as Lady Paton had taken Perior’s arm and led the way, she drew herself up in a mimicry of their stately progress, and followed them demurely.