mitted
herself the first part of a sigh of relief; and her son laughed, but
apparently not at her. "They're just reading Middlemarch. They say
there's so much talk about it. Oh, I suppose they're very good people.
They seemed to be on very good terms with each other."

"I suppose it's the plain sister who's reading Middlemarch."

"Plain? Is she plain?" asked the young man, as if searching his
consciousness. "Yes, it's the older one who does the reading,
apparently. But I don't believe that even she overdoes it. They like
to talk better. They reminded me of Southern people in that." The
young man smiled, as if amused by some of his impressions of the Lapham
family. "The living, as the country people call it, is tremendously
good. The Colonel--he's a colonel--talked of the coffee as his wife's
coffee, as if she had personally made it in the kitchen, though I
believe it was merely inspired by her. And there was everything in the
house that money could buy. But money has its limitations."

This was a fact which Mrs. Corey was beginning to realise more and more
unpleasantly in her own life; but it seemed to bring her a certain
comfort in its application to the Laphams. "Yes, there is a point
where taste has to begin," she said.

"They seemed to want to apologise to me for not having more books,"
said Corey. "I don't know why they should. The Colonel said they
bought a good many books, first and last; but apparently they don't
take them to the sea-side."

"I dare say they NEVER buy a NEW book. I've met some of these moneyed
people lately, and they lavish on every conceivable luxury, and then
borrow books, and get them in the cheap paper editions."

"I fancy that's the way with the Lapham family," said the young man,
smilingly. "But they are very good people. The other daughter is
humorous."

"Humorous?" Mrs. Corey knitted her brows in some perplexity. "Do you
mean like Mrs. Sayre?" she asked, naming the lady whose name must come
into every Boston mind when humour is mentioned.

"Oh no; nothing like that. She never says anything that you can
remember; nothing in flashes or ripples; nothing the least literary.
But it's a sort of droll way of looking at things; or a droll medium
through which things present themselves. I don't know. She tells what
she's seen, and mimics a little."

"Oh," said Mrs. Corey coldly. After a moment she asked: "And is Miss
Irene as pretty as ever?"

"She's a wonderful