at dinner, and it was in the process of breaking
bread that a semblance of intimacy was established. And at last, when
winter had gone and the green afternoons opposed the dusk, Tristrem now
and then would drop in of an evening, and in the absence of Miss Raritan
pass an hour with her mother. Truly she was not the rose, but did she
not dwell at her side?

Meanwhile, Miss Raritan's attitude differed but little from the one
which she had first adopted. She treated Tristrem with exasperating
familiarity, and kept him at arm's length. She declined to see him when
the seeing would have been easy, and summoned him when the summons was
least to be expected. He was useful to her as a piece of furniture, and
she utilized him as such. In the matter of flowers and theatres he was a
convenience. And at routs and assemblies the attention of an heir
apparent to seven million was a homage and a tribute which Miss Raritan
saw no reason to forego.

In this Tristrem had no one but himself to blame. He had been, and was,
almost canine in his demeanor to her. She saw it, knew it, felt it, and
treated him accordingly. And he, with the cowardice of love, made little
effort at revolt. Now and then he protested to Mrs. Raritan, to whom he
had made no secret of his admiration for her daughter, and who consoled
him as best she might; but that was all. And so the winter passed and
the green afternoons turned sultry, and Tristrem was not a step further
advanced than on the day when he had left the girl at the milliner's. On
the infrequent occasions when he had ventured to say some word of that
which was nearest his heart, she had listened with tantalizing
composure, and when he had paused for encouragement or rebuke, she would
make a remark of such inappositeness that anyone else would have planted
her there and gone. But Tristrem was none other than himself; his nature
commanded and he obeyed.

It so happened that one May morning a note was brought him, in which
Miss Raritan said that her mother and herself were to leave in a day or
two for the country, and could he not get her something to read on the
way. Tristrem passed an hour selecting, with infinite and affectionate
care, a small bundle of foreign literature. In the package he found room
for Balzac's "Pierrette" and the "Cure de Tours," one of Mme. Craven's
stupidities, a volume of platitude in rhyme by Francois Coppee, a copy
of De Amicis' futile wanderings in Spain--a few samples, in f