er than,

"They were very material looking."

"They are very happy looking. They live in the present. That is what
I should like: living in the present, and not looking backwards or
forwards. After all, the present is the only life we've got, isn't it?"

"I suppose you may say it is," Mrs. Kenton admitted, not knowing just
where the talk was leading, but dreading to interrupt it.

"But that isn't the Scheveningen woman's only ideal. Their other
ideal is to keep the place clean. Saturday afternoon they were all out
scrubbing the brick sidewalks, and clear into the middle of the street.
We were almost ashamed to walk over the nice bricks, and we picked out
as many dirty places as we could find."

Ellen laughed, with a light-hearted gayety that was very strange to her,
and Mrs. Kenton, as she afterwards told her husband, did not know what
to think.

"I couldn't help wondering," she said, "whether the poor child would
have liked to keep on living in the present a month ago."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't say so," the judge answered.

XX.

From the easy conquest of the men who looked at her Lottie proceeded to
the subjection of the women. It would have been more difficult to put
these down, if the process had not been so largely, so almost entirely
subjective. As it was, Lottie exchanged snubs with many ladies of the
continental nationalities who were never aware of having offered or
received offence. In some cases, when they fearlessly ventured to speak
with her, they behaved very amiable, and seemed to find her conduct
sufficiently gracious in return. In fact, she was approachable enough,
and had no shame, before Boyne, in dismounting from the high horse which
she rode when alone with him, and meeting these ladies on foot, at least
half-way. She made several of them acquainted with her mother, who,
after a timorous reticence, found them very conversable, with a range of
topics, however, that shocked her American sense of decorum. One
Dutch lady talked with such manly freedom, and with such untrammelled
intimacy, that she was obliged to send Boyne and Lottie about their
business, upon an excuse that was not apparent to the Dutch lady. She
only complimented Mrs. Kenton upon her children and their devotion
to each other, and when she learned that Ellen was also her daughter,
ventured the surmise she was not long married.

"It isn't her husband," Mrs. Kenton explained, with inward trouble.
"It's just a gentlema