passable barriers which baffled, puzzled men are
unable to tear down. It was impossible, I thought, that she should
remain blind to his open passion for herself: he was anything but
subtle, was Richard of the Lionheart. A blind man could have told,
from the mere sound of his voice, a deaf man from the mere
expression of his eyes, that Alicia had the big doctor's whole
heart.

On his side, he was in deep waters. His ruddy color faded; his face
took on a fixed, grim intensity. And when he watched the girl
flirting now with this boy, now with that, after the innocent
fashion of natural girls, but always reserving a friendlier smile, a
more eager greeting, for Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, I was so sorry for
Doctor Richard that I couldn't help trying, covertly, to console
him.

It so happened that Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons, daughter of the
Puritans though she was, nevertheless had a distinct liking for what
she termed Episcopacy. She was pleased with old St. Polycarp's. She
liked Mrs. Haile, to whom she happened to mention that her
opportunities for studying the life of native women and children in
the East had been rather unusually good, since she had visited many
missionary stations in China and India. Things were languishing just
then, and Mrs. Haile looked at Miss Emmeline almost imploringly:
would she, could she, give the ladies a little lecture?--tell us
things first-hand, so to speak?

Miss Emmeline reflected. She looked at Alicia and me.

"Could we have it in your delightful library?" she wondered. "That
beautiful old room has a soul which speaks to mine. Dear Miss Smith,
would it be too much to ask you to let me have my little talk, a
very informal little lecture, in wonderful old Hynds House?"

Mrs. Haile turned a sort of greenish pink. It wasn't for her to
suggest, after that, that it might be better to have the lecture in
the parsonage; any more than for me to hint, without ungraciousness,
that it might be just as well not to have it in Hynds House. Alicia
shot me one quizzical, Irish-blue glance when I said, "Yes."

And that's how, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, all Hyndsville came
to Hynds House to hear Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons tell them "How
to Reach the Women of the East." Somehow, I rather think they were
as curious about two Yankee women as they were about those Eastern
women of whom Miss Emmeline was talking. I'm sure Hynds House was
just as interesting to them as Mohammedan harems and Indian zenan