was so perfectly in
keeping that the very parlourmaid's cap looked Chippendale, and it
somehow suggested Hugh Thomson's illustrations to Jane Austen's books.
Mrs. Irwin and Madeline were not, however, in the least degree like Miss
Austen's heroines and their mothers, except that Mrs. Irwin, though very
thin and elegant, had this one resemblance to the immortal Mrs. Bennet
in "Pride and Prejudice": "the serious object of her life was to get her
daughter married; its solace, gossiping and news." Also she had much of
the same querulousness, and complained every night of nerves, and each
morning of insomnia.

Madeline was reading John Addington Symonds' Renaissance and everything
that she could get on the subject of Italian history and cinquecento
art. These studies she pursued still as a sort of monument to Rupert, or
as a link with him. And to-day, as she was waiting for Bertha to call
and take her out, she received a letter from him, from Venice.

It was one of his long, friendly, cultured letters; making no allusion
to any thoughts of becoming more than friends to each other, and no
reference to the interlude of his proposal, or the episode of her
engagement to Charlie. This memory seemed to have faded away, and he
wrote in his old instructive way a long letter in his pretty little
handwriting, speaking of gondoliers, Savonarola, hotels, pictures,
lagoons, fashions and the weather. This last, he declared to be so
unbearable that he thought of coming back to London before very long. He
asked for an answer to his letter, and wished to know what she was
reading, what concerts she had been to, and whether she had seen the
exhibition at the Goupil Gallery.

But though it took her back to long before the period of his
love-letter, and he appeared to wish the whole affair to be forgotten,
it gave her considerable satisfaction. He wanted to hear of her, and,
what was more, he was coming back. Of course Mrs. Irwin saw that the
letter was from him, and she remarked that she had always said everyone
had a right to their own letters, and that after twenty-one, nowadays,
she supposed girls could do exactly what they liked, which she thought
was only fair; that mothers, very rightly, hardly counted in the present
day, were regarded as nobody, and were treated with no confidence of any
kind, of which she thoroughly approved; that Madeline's new coat and
skirt suited her very badly and did not fit; and that grey had never
been her