hat I'm doin' just what Mr. Landa
would have wanted I should. He picked her out himself, moa than three
yea's ago, when we was drivin' past her house at Middlemount, and it was
to humor him afta he was gone, moa than anything else, that I took her.
Well, she wa'n't so very easy to git, either, I can tell you." She cut
short her history of the affair to say when Clementina came back, "I
want you should do the odderin' yourself, Miss Milray, and not let her
scrimp with the money. She wants to git some visitin' cahds; and if you
miss anything about her that she'd ought to have, or that any otha yong
lady's got, won't you just git it for her?"

As soon as she imagined the case, Miss Milray set herself to overcome
Mrs. Lander's reluctance from a maid. She prevailed with her to try the
Italian woman whom she sent her, and in a day the genial Maddalena had
effaced the whole tradition of the bleak Ellida. It was not essential to
the understanding which instantly established itself between them that
they should have any language in common. They babbled at each other,
Mrs. Lander in her Bostonized Yankee, and Maddalena in her gutteral
Florentine, and Mrs. Lander was flattered to find how well she knew
Italian.

Miss Milray had begun being nice to Clementina in fealty to her brother,
who so seldom made any proof of her devotion to him, and to whom she
bad remained passionately true through his shady past. She was eager
to humor his whim for the little country girl who had taken his
fancy, because it was his whim, and not because she had any hopes that
Clementina would justify it. She had made Dr. Welwright tell her all he
knew about her, and his report of her grace and beauty had piqued her
curiosity; his account of the forlorn dullness of her life with Mrs.
Lander in their hotel had touched her heart. But she was still skeptical
when she went to get her letter of introduction; when she brought
Clementina home from the dressmaker's she asked if she might kiss her,
and said she was already in love with her.

Her love might have made her wish to do everything for her that she now
began to do, but it simplified the situation to account for her to the
world as the ward of Mrs. Lander, who was as rich as she was vulgar, and
it was with Clementina in this character that Miss Milray began to
make the round of afternoon teas, and inspired invitations for her at
pleasant houses, by giving a young ladies' lunch for her at her own.
Before