t of apology and self-accusation in a style
peculiar to herself. If in her youth and cleverness she was at times a
little sharp-tongued and self-opinionated, the vehemence of her
self-reproaches when she saw herself in fault was always a joke with
those who knew her.

"Eleanor's confessions are only to be matched by her favourite Jeremy
Taylor's," said Jack one day.

"She's just as bumptious next time, all the same," said Clement. He had
been disputing with Eleanor, and the generous grace of meeting an
apology half-way was no part of his character.

He had an arbitrary disposition, in which Eleanor to some extent shared.
He controlled it to fairness in discussions with men, but with men only.
With Eleanor, who persisted in thinking for herself, and was not slow to
express her thoughts, he had many hot disputes, in which he often seemed
unable to be fair, and did not always trouble himself to be reasonable.

By his own account he "detested girls with opinions." Abroad he was
politely contemptuous of feminine ideas; at home he was apt to be rudely
so.

But this was only one, and a later development of many-sided Clement.

And the subject is a digression, and has no business here.

CHAPTER XV.

ELEANOR'S THEORIES REDUCED TO PRACTICE--STUDIES--THE ARITHMETIC-MASTER.

Madame was not ungenerous to an apology. She believed in Eleanor too,
and was quite disposed to think that Eleanor might be in the right in a
dispute with anybody but herself. Perhaps she hoped to hear her triumph
in a discussion with Mr. Henley, or perhaps it was only as a punishment
for her presumptuous remarks that Madame started the subject on the
following day to the drawing-master himself.

"Miss Arkwright says your trees are all one, Mr. Henley," she began.
(Madame's English was not perfect.) "Except that the half are yellow and
the other half blue. She knows not the kind even."

The poor little drawing-master, who was at that moment "touching up" a
yellow tree in one of the younger girls' copies, trying by skilfully
distributed dabs to make it look less like a faded cabbage-leaf,
blushed, and laid down his brush. Eleanor, who was just beginning to
colour a copy of a mountain scene, turned scarlet, and let her first
wash dry into unmanageable shapes as she darted indignant glances at
Madame, who appeared to enjoy her bit of malice.

"Miss Arkwright will observe that these are sketches indicating the
general effect of a scene; not tr