cepts your hospitality with the utmost gratitude," said Miss
Rose Fletcher, extending a little hand in a wonderful loose gray
travelling glove. Mrs. Whitman took the offered hand and let it drop.
She was rigid and prim. She smiled, but the smile was merely a
widening of her thin, pale, compressed lips. She looked at the girl
with gray eyes, which had a curious blank sharpness in them. Rose
Fletcher was so very well dressed, so very redolent of good breeding
and style, that it was difficult at first to comprehend if that was
all. Finally one perceived that she was a very pretty girl, of a
sweet, childish type, in spite of her finished manners and her very
sophisticated clothes. Sylvia at first saw nothing except the
clothes, and realized nothing except the finished manner. She
immediately called to the front her own manners, which were as
finished as the girl's, albeit of a provincial type. Extreme manners
in East Westland required a wholly artificial voice and an expression
wholly foreign to the usual one. Horace had never before seen Sylvia
when all her manners were in evidence, and he gazed at her now in
astonishment and some dismay.

"Her mother was own sister to Miss Abrahama White, and Abrahama
White's mother and my mother were own cousins on the mother's side.
My mother was a White," she said. The voice came like a slender,
reedy whistle from between her moveless, widened lips. She stood as
if encased in armor. Her apron-strings stood out fiercely and were
quite evident over each hip. She held her head very high, and the
cords on her long, thin neck stood out.

Poor Rose Fletcher looked a little scared and a little amused. She
cast a glance at Horace, as if for help. He did not know what to say,
but tried manfully to say it. "I have never fully known, in such a
case," he remarked, "whether the relationship is second cousin or
first cousin once removed." It really seemed to him that he had never
known. He looked up with relief as Henry entered the room, and Sylvia
turned to him, still with her manners fully in evidence.

"Mr. Whitman, this is Miss Abrahama White's niece," said she.

She bowed stiffly herself as Henry bowed. He was accustomed to
Sylvia's company manners, but still he was not himself. He had never
seen a girl like this, and he was secretly both angry and alarmed to
note the difference between her and Sylvia, and all women to which he
had been used. However, his expression changed directly before