xt minute, as she became conscious of what
she had said,--and, still more, of what she felt--smote her own
heart (as it flushed her face) with surprise, and with the force of a
revelation: "I wish it would sink him to the bottom of the sea!"

Her sister stared, then caught her by the dress, as she passed from her,
drawing her back with a weak hand. "Oh, my dearest, my poorest!" And she
pulled Kate down and down toward her, so that the girl had nothing for
it but to sink on her knees and bury her face in Mildred's lap. If that
ingenious invalid did not know everything now, she knew a great deal.

PART III.

V.

Mrs. Percival proved very pretty. It is more gracious to begin with this
declaration, instead of saying that, in the first place, she proved very
silly. It took a long day to arrive at the end of her silliness, and the
two ladies at Posilippo, even after a week had passed, suspected that
they had only skirted its edges. Kate Theory had not spent half an hour
in her company before she gave a little private sigh of relief; she felt
that a situation which had promised to be embarrassing was now quite
clear, was even of a primitive simplicity. She would spend with her
sister-in-law, in the coming time, one week in the year; that was all
that was mortally possible. It was a blessing that one could see exactly
what she was, for in that way the question settled itself. It would have
been much more tiresome if Agnes had been a little less obvious; then
she would have had to hesitate and consider and weigh one thing against
another. She was pretty and silly, as distinctly as an orange is yellow
and round; and Kate Theory would as soon have thought of looking to her
to give interest to the future as she would have thought of looking to
an orange to impart solidity to the prospect of dinner. Mrs. Percival
travelled in the hope of meeting her American acquaintance, or of making
acquaintance with such Americans as she did meet, and for the purpose
of buying mementos for her relations. She was perpetually adding to her
store of articles in tortoise-shell, in mother-of-pearl, in olive-wood,
in ivory, in filigree, in tartan lacquer, in mosaic; and she had a
collection of Roman scarfs and Venetian beads, which she looked over
exhaustively every night before she went to bed. Her conversation
bore mainly upon the manner in which she intended to dispose of these
accumulations. She was constantly changing about, among e