ot so simply.

She did not wait for her daughter to speak, but took Cornelia's hand,
and said in a soft voice, "Miss Saunders? I am very glad we found you
at home. My daughter has been speaking to me about you, and we hoped to
have come sooner, but we couldn't manage together before."

"Won't you sit down?" asked Cornelia.

"No, I thank you," Mrs. Maybough returned, with a velvety tenderness of
tone that seemed to convey assent. "We shall be rather late, as it is.
I hope you're comfortably situated here."

"Oh, very," said Cornelia. "I've never been away from home before, and
of course it isn't like home."

"Yes," said Mrs. Maybough, "one misses the refinements of home in such
places." She turned and swept the appointments of the room, including
the students of psychology, with a critical eye.

"I wish _I_ could come here," sighed the daughter. "If I could have a
room like Cornelia's, mamma! I _wish_ you could see it."

"I'm glad you're pleasantly placed, Miss Saunders. I hope you're not
working too hard at the Synthesis. I understand the young ladies there
are so enthusiastic."

"Oh, no," Cornelia protested.

"Of course she is!" said Charmian. "Everybody works too hard at the
Synthesis. It's the ideal of the place. We woke her out of a nap, and I
know she was tired to death."

Cornelia could not deny it, and so she said nothing.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Maybough, non-committally; "that won't do." She paused,
without intermitting the scrutiny which Cornelia felt she had been
subjecting her to from the first moment through her veil. "You mustn't
wear yourself out." She paused again, and then while Charmian turned
away with an effect of impatience, she asked, "Do you ever go out on
Sundays?"

"Why, I don't know," Cornelia began, not certain whether Mrs. Maybough
meant walking out or driving out; young people did both in Pymantoning.

Mrs. Maybough pursued: "We receive on Thursdays, but we have a few
friends coming in to-morrow afternoon, and we should be very glad to
see you, if you have nothing better."

The invitation was so tentatively, so gingerly offered in manner, if
not in words, that Cornelia was not quite sure it had been given. She
involuntarily searched her memory for something better before she
spoke; for the first time in her life she was about to invent a
previous engagement, when Charmian suddenly turned and laid her arms
about her neck.

"You'll come, of course!"

"Charmian!" said Mrs. Mayboug