ll, is a man of settled habits. His greatest genius has been to make
romance out of the commonplace sequences of life."

She sprang up and walked to the mantel.

"That is true," she said. "I never show that side of me to him. He would
not know what strange spirit moved me. I inherited none of it from him
or my mother. I never show that side to anybody."

"Except to me," I said mischievously.

"Except to you," she affirmed without a smile. "But sometimes I feel
like a wolf in lamb skin."

"At those times I take a brisk walk," I said.

"I do, too. I walk around the Monument nearly every afternoon at five,
with father's dog. Usually at that hour he is at the club."

"Shall I recognize you then by a shaggy, Scotch hound?" I asked.

"By all means," she said, laughing wholesomely. "I suppose in the novels
they would call that a secret meeting."

In spite of the light manner in which she had spoken, she had lowered
her voice a little when she heard a step in the hall. Margaret entered,
as I have seen her so many, many times since, to collect the little
coffee-cups.

The old servant, I felt without seeing, did not take her eyes away from
me while she was in the room; so conscious was I of being the subject of
her observation that I could find but few words to carry on the
conversation. The very effect--that of an intimate dialogue
interrupted--was produced in spite of my desire to avoid it, and when
she left, Julianna had changed her mood. Finding, perhaps, that I was
content to listen, she employed a delicate piece of strategy to place me
in her father's lounging-chair where I could watch her as she leaned
back among the pillows, and in a voice, more soothing than any I had
ever heard, described to me in quaint phrases the character of six
imaginary persons who might among themselves make up a world, with all
the traits of personality which we find in our own. From this piquant
attempt, she emerged to plunge into a light discussion of heredity.

"I can see a trace of the Judge in your belief," said I.

She admitted that he had been her teacher, that they often discussed
such things. It needed no denial from Julianna, however, to know that
her convictions about the power of inherited tendencies had come from
her own thought. Her mind, unlike her manner, had little submissiveness,
and, furthermore, she recited several cases from her own shrewd
observation.

Can I attribute my entranced interest on that occasion to