ad nothing to do with the nature of
his own interest in the eldest, both because it was clear that Mrs.
Temperly would do very little for _him_, and because he didn't care how
little she did.

Effie and Tishy sat in the circle, on the edge of rather high chairs,
while Mademoiselle Bourde surveyed in them with complacency the results
of her own superiority. Tishy was a child, but Effie was fifteen, and
they were both very nice little girls, arrayed in fresh travelling
dresses and deriving a quaintness from the fact that Tishy was already
armed, for foreign adventures, with a smart new reticule, from which
she could not be induced to part, and that Effie had her finger in her
'place' in a fat red volume of _Murray_. Raymond knew that in a general
way their mother would not have allowed them to appear in the
drawing-room with these adjuncts, but something was to be allowed to the
fever of anticipation. They were both pretty, with delicate features and
blue eyes, and would grow up into worldly, conventional young ladies,
just as Dora had not done. They looked at Mademoiselle Bourde for
approval whenever they spoke, and, in addressing their mother
alternately with that accomplished woman, kept their two languages
neatly distinct.

Raymond had but a vague idea of who the people were who had come to bid
Cousin Maria farewell, and he had no wish for a sharper one, though she
introduced him, very definitely, to the whole group. She might make
light of him in her secret soul, but she would never put herself in the
wrong by omitting the smallest form. Fortunately, however, he was not
obliged to like all her forms, and he foresaw the day when she would
abandon this particular one. She was not so well made up in advance
about Paris but that it would be in reserve for her to detest the period
when she had thought it proper to 'introduce all round.' Raymond
detested it already, and tried to make Dora understand that he wished
her to take a walk with him in the corridors. There was a gentleman with
a curl on his forehead who especially displeased him; he made childish
jokes, at which the others laughed all at once, as if they had rehearsed
for it--jokes _a la portee_ of Effie and Tishy and mainly about them.
These two joined in the merriment, as if they followed perfectly, as
indeed they might, and gave a small sigh afterward, with a little
factitious air. Dora remained grave, almost sad; it was when she was
different, in this way, t