ly she turned to him with slightly
heightened color and said, ignoring his question:

"Would you rather think that you had done what you thought right because
you so thought, or because some one else wished to have you? Or, I
should say, would you rather think that the right suggestion was
another's than your own?"

He laughed a little, and said evasively: "You ought to be a lawyer, Miss
Blake. I should hate to have you cross-examine me unless I were very
sure of my evidence."

She gave a little shrug of her shoulders in reply as she turned and
resumed her embroidery. They talked for a while longer, but of other
things, the discussion of woman's influence having been dropped by
mutual consent.

After John's departure she suspended operations on the doily, and sat
for a while gazing reflectively into the fire. She was a person as frank
with herself as with others, and with as little vanity as was compatible
with being human, which is to say that, though she was not without it,
it was of the sort which could be gratified but not flattered--in fact,
the sort which flattery wounds rather than pleases. But despite her
apparent skepticism she had not been displeased by John's assertion that
she had influenced him in his course. She had expressed herself truly,
believing that he would have done as he had without her intervention;
but she thought that he was sincere, and it was pleasant to her to have
him think as he did.

Considering the surroundings and conditions under which she had lived,
she had had her share of the acquaintance and attentions of agreeable
men, but none of them had ever got with her beyond the stage of mere
friendliness. There had never been one whose coming she had particularly
looked forward to, or whose going she had deplored. She had thought of
marriage as something she might come to, but she had promised herself
that it should be on such conditions as were, she was aware, quite
improbable of ever being fulfilled. She would not care for a man because
he was clever and distinguished, but she felt that he must be those
things, and to have, besides, those qualities of character and person
which should attract her. She had known a good many men who were clever
and to some extent distinguished, but none who had attracted her
personally. John Lenox did not strike her as being particularly clever,
and he certainly was not distinguished, nor, she thought, ever very
likely to be; but she had had a pleasur