and we should all be together.'

'Well, my dear, when you do come back to Paris we will talk about it,'
said Mrs. Temperly, turning away from the window.

'I should like it better, Cousin Maria, if you trusted me a little
more,' Raymond sighed, observing that she was not really giving her
thoughts to what he said. She irritated him somehow; she was so full of
her impending departure, of her arrangements, her last duties and
memoranda. She was not exactly important, any more than she was humble;
she was too conciliatory for the one and too positive for the other. But
she bustled quietly and gave one the sense of being 'up to' everything;
the successive steps of her enterprise were in advance perfectly clear
to her, and he could see that her imagination (conventional as she was
she had plenty of that faculty) had already taken up its abode on one of
those fine _premiers_ which she had never seen, but which by instinct
she seemed to know all about, in the very best part of the quarter of
the Champs Elysees. If she ruffled him envy had perhaps something to do
with it: she was to set sail on the morrow for the city of his affection
and he was to stop in New York, where the fact that he was but half
pleased did not alter the fact that he had his studio on his hands and
that it was a bad one (though perhaps as good as any use he should put
it to), which no one would be in a hurry to relieve him of.

It was easy for him to talk to Mrs. Temperly in that airy way about
going back, but he couldn't go back unless the old gentleman gave him
the means. He had already given him a great many things in the past, and
with the others coming on (Marian's marriage-outfit, within three
months, had cost literally thousands), Raymond had not at present the
face to ask for more. He must sell some pictures first, and to sell them
he must first paint them. It was his misfortune that he saw what he
wanted to do so much better than he could do it. But he must really try
and please himself--an effort that appeared more possible now that the
idea of following Dora across the ocean had become an incentive. In
spite of secret aspirations and even intentions, however, it was not
encouraging to feel that he made really no impression at all on Cousin
Maria. This certitude was so far from agreeable to him that he almost
found it in him to drop the endearing title by which he had hitherto
addressed her. It was only that, after all, her husband had been
d