her husband is, I'll have
no reputation; and if there is one thing I want, it is a spotless
reputation--sometime."

Hylda laughed--the manner and the voice were so droll--but her face
saddened too, and her big eyes with the drooping lashes looked up
pensively at the portrait of her husband's mother.

"Was it ever a happy family, or a lucky family?" she asked.

"It's lucky now, and it ought to be happy now," was the meaning reply.

Hylda made no answer, but caught the strings of the 'cello lightly,
and shook her head reprovingly, with a smile meant to be playful. For a
moment she played, humming to herself, and then the Duchess touched the
hand that was drawing the bow softly across the strings. She had behind
her garishness a gift for sympathy and a keen intuition, delicacy, and
allusiveness. She knew what to say and what to leave unsaid, when her
heart was moved.

"My darling," she said now, "you are not quite happy; but that is
because you don't allow yourself to get well. You've never recovered
from your attack last summer; and you won't, until you come out into
the world again and see people. This autumn you ought to have been at
Homburg or at Aix, where you'd take a little cure of waters and a great
deal of cure of people. You were born to bask in friendship and the sun,
and to draw from the world as much as you deserve, a little from many,
for all you give in return. Because, dearest, you are a very agreeable
person, with enough wit and humanity to make it worth the world's while
to conspire to make you do what will give it most pleasure, and let
yourself get most--and that's why I've come."

"What a person of importance I am!" answered Hylda, with a laugh that
was far from mirthful, though she caught the plump, wrinkled little hand
of the Duchess and pressed it. "But really I'm getting well here
fast. I'm very strong again. It is so restful, and one's days go by so
quietly."

"Yet, I'm not sure that it's rest you want. I don't think it is. You
want tonics--men and women and things. Monte Carlo would do you a world
of good--I'd go with you. Eglington gambles here"--she watched Hylda
closely--"why shouldn't you gamble there?"

"Eglington gambles?" Hylda's face took on a frightened look, then
it cleared again, and she smiled. "Oh, of course, with international
affairs, you mean. Well, I must stay here and be the croupier."

"Nonsense! Eglington is his own croupier. Besides, he is so much in
London, and yo