ent than the others in which he
was submerged.

[Illustration: He was doomed by his own lack of thought to sit
through an especially long session]

He sat straight and grave, his eyes retrospective. He was constantly
getting into awkward situations, and acquitting himself in them with
marvellous dignity and grace. Even Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder, astute as
she was, regarded him keenly, and could not for the life of her tell
whether he had come premeditatedly or not. She only discovered one
thing, that poor Miss Bessy Dicky was reading at him and posing at
him and trembling her hands at him, and that she was throwing it all
away, for Von Rosen heard no more of her report than if he had been
in China when she was reading it. Mrs. Snyder realised that hardly
anything in nature could be so totally uninteresting to the young man
as the report of a woman's club. Inasmuch as she herself was devoted
to such things, she regarded him with disapproval, although with a
certain admiration. Karl von Rosen always commanded admiration,
although often of a grudging character, from women. His utter
indifference to them as women was the prime factor in this; next to
that his really attractive, even distinguished, personality. He was
handsome after the fashion which usually accompanies devotion to
women. He was slight, but sinewy, with a gentle, poetical face and
great black eyes, into which women were apt to project tenderness
merely from their own fancy. It seemed ridiculous and anomalous that
a man of Von Rosen's type should not be a lover of ladies, and the
fact that he was most certainly not was both fascinating and
exasperating.

Now Mrs. George B. Slade, magnificent matron, as she was, moreover
one who had inhaled the perfume of adulation from her youth up, felt
a calm malice. She knew that he had entered her parlour after the
manner of the spider and fly rhyme of her childhood; she knew that
the other ladies would infer that he had come upon her invitation,
and her soul was filled with one of the petty triumphs of petty
Fairbridge.

She, however, did not dream of the actual misery which filled the
heart of the graceful, dignified young man by her side. She
considered herself in the position of a mother, who forces an
undesired, but nevertheless, delectable sweet upon a child, who gazes
at her with adoration when the savour has reached his palate. She did
not expect Von Rosen to be much edified by Miss Bessy Dicky's report.
She ha