bably took place and people alike for granted. But she had
lived, and as an animal she was superb! I looked again into her healthy
face and speaking eyes, with their bitter knowledge of good and evil,
their scorn of scorn, their redeeming honesty and candour. The contrast
was complete in every detail except the widowhood of both women; but I
did not pursue it any farther; for once more there was but one woman in
my thoughts, and she sat near me under a red parasol--clashing so
humanly with the everlasting snows!

"You don't answer my question, Captain Clephane. How much for your
thoughts?"

"I'll make you a present of them, Mrs. Lascelles. I was beginning to
think that a lot of rot has been written about the eternal snows and the
mountain-tops and all the rest of it. There a few lines in that last
little volume of Browning--"

I stopped of my own accord, for upon reflection the lines would have
made a rather embarrassing quotation. But meanwhile Mrs. Lascelles had
taken alarm on other grounds.

"Oh, _don't_ quote Browning!"

"Why not?"

"He is far too deep for me; besides, I don't care for poetry, and I was
asking you about Mrs. Evers."

"Well," I said, with some little severity, "she's a very clever woman."

"Clever enough to understand Browning?"

"Quite."

If this was irony, it was also self-restraint, for it was to Catherine's
enthusiasm that I owed my own. The debt was one of such magnitude as a
life of devotion could scarcely have repaid, for to whom do we owe so
much as to those who first lifted the scales from our eyes and awakened
within us a soul for all such things? Catherine had been to me what I
instantly desired to become to this benighted beauty; but the desire was
not worth entertaining, since I hardly expected to be many minutes
longer on speaking terms with Mrs. Lascelles. I recalled the fact that
it was I who had broached the subject of Bob Evers and his mother,
together with my unpalatable motive for so doing. And I was seeking in
my mind, against the grain, I must confess, for a short cut back to Bob,
when Mrs. Lascelles suddenly led the way.

"I don't think," said she, "that Mr. Evers takes after his mother."

"I'm afraid he doesn't," I replied, "in that respect."

"And I am glad," she said. "I do like a boy to be a boy. The only son
of his mother is always in danger of becoming something else. Tell me,
Captain Clephane, are they very devoted to each other?"

There was some new no