h
a deprecating smile that might have disarmed her. "No, I have not come
to lecture: my mission is perfectly peaceful, as befits this lovely
afternoon. I wonder what you ladies find to do all day?" he continued,
abruptly changing the subject, and trying to find something that would
not attract her satire.

Mrs. Cheyne seemed a little taken aback by this direct question; and
then she drew up her beautiful head a little haughtily, and laughed.

"Ah, you are cunning, Mr. Drummond. You found me disposed to take the
offensive in the matter of church-going, and now you are on another
track. There is a lecture somewhere in the background. How doth the
little busy bee, etc. Now, don't frown,"--as Mr. Drummond knitted his
brows and really looked annoyed: "I will not refuse to be
catechised."

"I should not presume to catechise you," he returned, hastily. "I
appeal to Miss Mewlstone if my question were not a very innocent
one."

"Just so; just so," replied Miss Mewlstone; but she looked a little
alarmed at this appeal. "Oh, very innocent; oh, very so."

"With two against me I must yield," returned Mrs. Cheyne, with a curl
of her lip. "What do we do with our time, Miss Mewlstone? Your
occupation speaks for itself: it is exquisitely feminine. Don't tell
Miss Mattie, Mr. Drummond, but I never work. I would as soon arm
myself with a dagger as a needle or a pair of scissors. When I am not
in the air, I paint. I only lay aside my palette for a book."

"You paint!" exclaimed Archie, with sudden interest. It was the first
piece of information he had yet gleaned.

"Yes," she returned, indifferently: "one must do something to kill
time, and music was never my forte. I sketch and draw and paint after
my own sweet will. There are portfolios full of my sketches in
there,"--with a movement of her hand towards a curtained recess. "No,
I know what you are going to say: you will ask to see them; but I
never show them to any one."

"For what purpose, then, do you paint them?" were the words on his
lips; but he forbore to utter them. But she read the question in his
eyes.

"Did I not say one must kill time?" she returned, rather irritably:
"the occupation is soothing: surely that is reason enough."

"It is a good enough reason, I suppose," he replied, reluctantly, for
surely he must say a word here; "but one need not talk about killing
time, with so much that one could do."

Then there came a gleam of suppressed mischief in her eyes: