inctly
the sense of being a chit, a thing Louise was not at all used to. She
was apparently one of those women who have no use for persons of their
own sex; but few women, even of that sort, could have so promptly
relegated Louise to the outside of their interest, or so frankly devoted
themselves to Maxwell. The impartial spectator might easily have
imagined that it was his ankle which had been strained, and that Louise
was at best an intrusive sympathizer. Sometimes Mrs. Harley did not
hear what she said; at other times, if she began a response to her, she
ended it in a question to him; even when she talked to Louise, her eyes
were smouldering upon Maxwell. If this had all or any of it been
helpless or ignorant rudeness, it could have been borne and forgiven;
but Louise was aware of intention, of perfect intelligence in it; she
was sensible of being even more disliked than disliking, and of finally
being put to flight with a patronizing benevolence for her complete
recovery that was intolerable. What was worse was that, while the woman
had been so offensive, she could not wholly rid herself of the feeling
that her punishment was in a measure merited, though it was not justice
that had dealt with her.

"Well, that is over," said Maxwell, when they were again by themselves.

"Yes, forever," sighed Louise, and for once she was not let have the
last word.

"I hope you'll remember that I didn't want to go."

At least, they had not misunderstood each other about Mrs. Harley.

Towards the end of the month, Louise's father and mother came on from
Boston. They professed that they had been taken with that wish to see
the autumn exhibition at the National Academy which sometimes affects
Bostonians, and that their visit had nothing to do with the little hurt
that Louise wrote them of when she was quite well of it. They drove over
from their hotel the morning they arrived, and she did not know anything
of their coming till she heard their voices at the door; her father's
voice was rather husky from the climb to her apartment.

The apartment was looking somewhat frouzy, for the Maxwells breakfasted
late, and the house-maid had not had time to put it in order. Louise saw
it through her father's and mother's eyes with the glance they gave it,
and found the rooms ridiculously little, and furnished with cheap
Fourteenth Street things; but she bragged all the more noisily of it on
that account, and made her mother look out of the w