York) a
little shallow and unconvincing, she never showed it. Handsome and
serene, a trifle more matronly than women of her age appear to-day,
perhaps, but none the less admired for it, she moved through her duties
of household, nursery, ballroom and _salon_, omitting nothing,
excelling in all.

No charity bazaar, no educational exhibition, no welcoming of
distinguished foreigners, no celebration of the arts, was complete
without Mrs. Elliot Lestrange. For her son's sake she patronized music
extensively, for her daughter's, she sat through endless balls and
garden parties. By the time they were both married, her dark hair was
powdered with silver.

"What a beautiful old lady mamma is going to make," Wilhelmina said to
her brother, who had made a flying visit across the Atlantic and left
the old Italian villa where he made music all day among the birds and
orange-trees, to see his sister's baby son.

"You think so?" he answered quickly, with his darting, foreign air. "I
am myself far from certain."

"Why, Elly, what do you mean?" she cried, looking up a moment from the
lace-trimmed bassinet. "What a thing to say!"

He laughed indulgently.

"Oh, you know everything I say always shocked you, Sister Mina," he
said. "What a joy it must have been to you and father when I left
these Puritan shores for good!"

"No, no," she began, but he tapped her lips.

"Yes, yes!" he contradicted. "Even to marry an opera singer, you were
glad to see me go! But about mamma: I suppose you mean that she will
sit in a Mechlin cap and knit, with a blue Angora cat on the rug beside
her, and hear this little lady in the bassinet here say her lessons?"

Something very like this had been in Wilhelmina's mind and she admitted
it.

"Well," young Elliot said, reflectively, "all I can say is, I don't
think so. There's something about mamma that you can't be sure of."

"Why, Elly, what do you mean?"

"I can't explain it exactly," he said, "but she's very deep--mamma.
Father doesn't understand her, you know."

"Now, Elliot, that is rank nonsense!" his sister contradicted. "You
remind me of that nurse Dr. Stanchon sent up when mamma had that fit of
not sleeping last year. She and mamma got on famously, from the first;
she stayed out of doors all night with her till mamma got to sleeping
again. She was used to it--the nurse, I mean--and didn't mind, she
said, she'd been doing it in the Adirondacks.

"I remember asking her why