n, but
without conviction; "I am afraid sometimes I bore people."

The polite stranger refrained from contradiction.

"You see," continued the poor lady, "I really am of good family."

"Dear lady," said the stranger, "your gentle face, your gentle voice,
your gentle bearing, all proclaim it."

She looked without flinching into the stranger's eyes, and gradually a
smile banished the reigning dulness of her features.

"How foolish of me." She spoke rather to herself than to the stranger.
"Why, of course, people--people whose opinion is worth troubling
about--judge of you by what you are, not by what you go about saying you
are."

The stranger remained silent.

"I am the widow of a provincial doctor, with an income of just two
hundred and thirty pounds per annum," she argued. "The sensible thing
for me to do is to make the best of it, and to worry myself about these
high and mighty relations of mine as little as they have ever worried
themselves about me."

The stranger appeared unable to think of anything worth saying.

"I have other connections," remembered Sir William's cousin; "those of
my poor husband, to whom instead of being the 'poor relation' I could
be the fairy god-mama. They are my people--or would be," added Sir
William's cousin tartly, "if I wasn't a vulgar snob."

She flushed the instant she had said the words and, rising, commenced
preparations for a hurried departure.

"Now it seems I am driving you away," sighed the stranger.

"Having been called a 'vulgar snob,'" retorted the lady with some heat,
"I think it about time I went."

"The words were your own," the stranger reminded her.

"Whatever I may have thought," remarked the indignant dame, "no
lady--least of all in the presence of a total stranger--would have
called herself--" The poor dame paused, bewildered. "There is something
very curious the matter with me this evening, that I cannot understand,"
she explained, "I seem quite unable to avoid insulting myself."

Still surrounded by bewilderment, she wished the stranger good-night,
hoping that when next they met she would be more herself. The stranger,
hoping so also, opened the door and closed it again behind her.

"Tell me," laughed Miss Devine, who by sheer force of talent was
contriving to wring harmony from the reluctant piano, "how did you
manage to do it? I should like to know."

"How did I do what?" inquired the stranger.

"Contrive to get rid so quickly of those two old