you must be right,
for it is just what I felt without being able quite to express it You
will stay for supper with us, of course. Yes, but you must, because it
is always a great comfort for me to talk with really sensible persons. I
do not wonder that you are not very eager to stay, though, for I am
probably a fright, with my eyes red, and with my hair all tumbling down,
like an old witch's. Well, let us see what can be done about it, sir!
There was a hand-mirror--"

And thus speaking, she tripped, with very much the reputed grace of a
fairy, toward the far end of the room, and standing a-tiptoe, groped at
the obscure shelves, with a resultant crash of falling china.

"Oh, but my lovely cups!" said Cynthia, in dismay. "I had forgotten they
were up there: and now I have smashed both of them, in looking for my
mirror, sir, and trying to prettify myself for you. And I had so fancied
them, because they had not their like in England!"

She looked at the fragments, and then at Musgrave, with wide, innocent
hurt eyes. She was honestly grieved by the loss of her quaint toys. But
Musgrave, in his sturdy, common-sense way, only laughed at her
seriousness over such kickshaws.

"I am for an honest earthenware tankard myself!" he said, jovially, as
the two went in to supper.

THE HIGH COST OF CONSCIENCE

_BY BEATRICE RAVENEL_

From _Harper's Magazine_

"Any woman who can accept money from a gentleman who is in no way
related to her--" Miss Fowler delivered judgment.

"My dear Aunt Maria, you mean a gentleman's disembodied spirit," Hugh's
light, pleasant tones intervened.

"A legacy, Maria, is not quite the same thing. Mr. Winthrop Fowler's
perfect intonation carried its usual implication that the subject was
closed.

"---- is what I call an adventuress," Miss Fowler summed up. She had a
way of ignoring objections, of reappearing beyond them like a submarine
with the ultimate and detonating answer. "And now she wants to reopen
the matter when the whole thing's over and done with. After three years.
Extraordinary taste." She hitched her black-velvet Voltaire arm-chair a
little away from the fire and spread a vast knitting-bag of Chinese
brocade over her knees. "I suppose she isn't satisfied; she wants more."

"Naturally. I cannot imagine what other reason she could have for
insisting on a personal interview," her brother agreed, dryly. He
retired into the _Transcript_ as a Trappist withdraws into his vows. A
c