my daughter and I; it will be a widening for us in
every way to be with you--with Mrs. Rutherford, Mrs. Harold, and
yourself. I have sometimes feared," she went on, looking at him with her
bright little eyes, "that we should become, perhaps have already become,
too motionless in our intellectual life down here, my daughter and
myself."

"Motionless things are better than moving ones, aren't they?" answered
Winthrop. "The people who try to keep up with everything are apt to be a
panting, breathless set. Besides, they lose all sense of comparison in
their haste, and don't distinguish; important things and unimportant
they talk about with equal eagerness, the only point with them is that
they should be new."

"You console me--you console me greatly," responded Mrs. Thorne. "Still,
I feel sure that knowledge, and important knowledge, is advancing with
giant strides outside, and that we, my daughter and I, are left behind.
I have seen but few of the later publications--could you not kindly give
me just an outline? In geology, for instance, always so absorbing, what
are the latest discoveries with regard to the Swiss lakes? And I should
be so grateful, too, for any choice thoughts you may be able to recall
at the moment from the more recent essays of Mr. Emerson; I can say with
truth that strengthening sentences from Mr. Emerson's writings were my
best mental pabulum during all the early years of my residence at the
South."

"I--I fancy that Mrs. Harold knows more of Emerson than I do," replied
Winthrop, reflecting upon the picture of the New England school-teacher
transplanted to East Angels, and supporting life there as best she
could, on a diet of Mr. Emerson and "Paradise Lost."

"An extremely intelligent and cultivated person," responded Mrs. Thorne,
with enthusiasm. "Do you know, Mr. Winthrop, that Mrs. Harold quite
fills my idea of a combination of our own Margaret Fuller and Madame de
Stael."

"Yet she can hardly be called talkative, can she?" said Winthrop,
smiling.

"It is her face, the language of her eye, that give me my impression.
Her silence seems to me but a fulness of intellect, a fulness at times
almost throbbing; she is a Corinne mute, a Margaret dumb."

"Were they ever mute, those two?" asked Winthrop.

Mrs. Thorne glanced at him. "I see you do not admire lady
conversationalists," she murmured, relaxing into her guarded little
smile.

Dr. Kirby, conversing with Mrs. Rutherford, had brought forw