times."

"Then you're not a good Catholic, Julie?"

"No," said Julie, after a pause, "not at all. But it sometimes catches
hold of me."

The old clock in the hall struck. The Duchess sprang up.

"Oh, Julie, I have got to be at Clarisse's by four. I _promised_ her I'd
go and settle about my Drawing-room dress to-day. Let's see the rest of
the house."

And they went rapidly through it. All of it was stamped with the same
character, representing, as it were, the meeting-point between an
inherited luxury and a personal asceticism. Beautiful chairs, or
cabinets transported sixty years before from one of the old Crowborough
houses in the country to this little abode, side by side with things the
cheapest and the commonest--all that Cousin Mary Leicester could ever
persuade herself to buy with her own money. For all the latter part of
her life she had been half a mystic and half a great lady, secretly
hating the luxury from which she had not the strength to free herself,
dressing ceremoniously, as the Duchess had said, for a solitary dinner,
and all the while going in sore remembrance of a Master who "had not
where to lay his head."

At any rate, there was an ample supply of household stuff for a single
woman and her maids. In the china cupboard there were still the
old-fashioned Crown Derby services, the costly cut glass, the Leeds and
Wedgewood dessert dishes that Cousin Mary Leicester had used for half a
century. The caretaker produced the keys of the iron-lined plate
cupboard, and showed its old-world contents, clean and in order.

"Why, Julie! If we'd only ordered the dinner I might have come to dine
with you to-night!" cried the Duchess, enjoying and peering into
everything like a child with its doll's house. "And the
linen--gracious!" as the doors of another cupboard were opened to her.
"But now I remember, Freddie said nothing was to be touched till he made
up his mind what to do with the little place. Why, there's everything!"

And they both looked in astonishment at the white, fragrant rows, at the
worn monogram in the corners of the sheets, at the little bags of
lavender and pot-pourri ranged along the shelves.

Suddenly Julie turned away and sat down by an open window, carrying her
eyes far from the house and its stores.

"It is too much, Evelyn," she said, sombrely. "It oppresses me. I don't
think I can live up to it."

"Julie!" and again the little Duchess came to stand caressingly beside
her. "Why,