place."

"How did you find her?" he asked, stirring his tea I had just handed
him, and looking at me. "Don't you think she has deteriorated in looks
very much?"

"Enormously," I replied, without hesitation.

There is nothing like conceding at once to your opponent any point that
you admit yourself. It saves discussion being wasted upon that which
you are really agreed about, and gives more weight to all you refuse to
relinquish to him afterwards.

My father looked a little surprised, and did not answer immediately,
and I continued,--

"She was always, as far as I remember, a girl who could look
exceedingly pretty and positively plain, and all the intermediate
gradations, within twenty-four hours, but really," I added, meeting his
eyes across the breakfast table, and the full blaze of the sunlight
falling into my own, "to me, in any one of them, she is equally"--

I hesitated a second, and he put in--

"Attractive?"

It was not the word I should have used, but it served, and I let it
pass.

"I suppose it's really her talent that fetches you as much as anything,
eh?" he said, after a few minutes.

"And her character," I answered; "her whole personality. I suppose all
those things weighed at first, but, as a matter of fact, now it is
quite enough that she is the woman I have determined upon."

"An admission of your own obstinacy," he answered, tartly.

"That may be the right term for it," I returned, "but I hardly think it
is. Theoretically, Lucia has belonged to me the past four years. An
idea, a habit of the mind, is full grown and has some strength at four
years of age."

My father said nothing, but lapsed into the silence of defeat or of
contempt, and we pursued our breakfast.

"Will you let me have the victoria this morning?" I said, after a long
silence. "She wants me to drive her to the Academy."

"Of course; I'm glad you can find something to do here. I'm afraid of
its seeming dull to you after Paris."

I looked up with elevated eyebrows.

"And wherein do you imagine the gaiety of Paris consisted?" I asked.

"Oh, I've no doubt you found plenty of amusement there," he answered,
with an indulgent smile.

"I assure you there was not one single hour of the whole time that was
not spent in work or thought," I said, seriously.

He laughed.

"I am delighted to hear it, I'm sure, Victor," he said, with the air of
a person who accepts the general truth of a statement with a large
reservation of