course I do,” he said, looking up at her, “that is the only definition needful. We may interpret differently, from different points of view.”

“You would find, I think, greater peace in mine, Michael. May you come to it in time!”

They were both silent for a moment, and both looked presently at Camelia.

“She is so much admired, and so unspoiled by it. So frank, so unaffected. She is found so clever.”

“So she tells me,” Perior could not repress.

“And so humorous,” Lady Paton added, taking his smile in its kindest sense, “she says the most amusing things.”

“Mr. Perior,” said Camelia, turning rather abruptly, “if Mamma is singing my praises I give you leave to repress her sternly.” She joined them, standing behind Lady Paton’s chair, and, over her head, looking at Perior. “I know how trying such praises are, heard outside the family circle.”

“In which I hope I may include myself. I enjoy Lady Paton’s interpretation.”

“Mamma would not believe the biting intention of that speech. Cuff! cuff! cuff! Il me fait des misères, Mamma!”

Lady Paton’s smile went from one to the other.

“You have always teased Michael, Camelia, and he has always been so patient with you.”

“Every one is patient with me, because I am a good girl. ‘Be good, sweet maid—’ I believe in a moral universe,” and Camelia over her mother’s head wrinkled up her nose roguishly as she made the edifying statement. “Mamma,” she added, “where is my flock this morning? I fancied that you were shepherding some of them. I want to trot them out before Mr. Perior. I want to study his expression as Sir Harry and Mr. Merriman present themselves. Sir Harry the mere superlative of Mr. Merriman’s fatuity. I imagine that by some biological adaptation of function they use their brains for digestive purposes, since I am sure they never think with them.”

Lady Paton took refuge from a painful recognition of the inhospitable nature of these remarks in a vague smile. Lady Paton had a faculty for misunderstanding when either misunderstanding or disapproval was necessary. If Camelia hoped by her brisk personalities to shock her former preceptor she failed signally, for laughing appreciatively he asked, “And for what purpose were these latest sports of evolution imported?”

“Purpose! Could one pin a purpose to such aimless beings? They came because I like to have beautiful things about me, and, in their way, they are beautiful. Then, too, with a plant-like persistency they turn to the sun, and I do not flatter myself in owning that I am their sun. It would have been cruel to deny them the opportunity of basking.”

“The hunting, dancing, yachting species, I suppose.”

“Yes; their lives comprise a few more movements, but very few. It is a mere sort of rhythmic necessity.”

Perior laughed again, and his eyes met hers, as she leaned above her mother’s chair, in quite a twinkling mood.

Mary, near the window, paused in her stitching to look at them both with a seemingly bovine contemplation.

“And who are your other specimens?” asked Perior, less conscious perhaps than was Camelia of the purely dual nature of the conversation. She enjoyed this little display before him, and her enjoyment was emphasized by the presence of two alien listeners, it defined so well the fundamental intellectual sympathy.

Her smile rested on him as she replied, “You saw Mrs. Fox-Darriel.”

“Yes.”

“My only other guest just now is Gwendolen Holt, in appearance a youthful replica of Mrs. Fox-Darriel, but in character very embryotic.”

“A very pretty girl,” said Lady Paton, finding at last her little foothold.

“A spice of ugliness—just a something to jar the insignificant regularity of her face, would make her charming. As it is, her prettiness is a bore. You will stay to lunch, Alceste, and see these people?”

“I can’t say that you have made me anxious to see them.”

“Have you no taste for sociology?”

“You will stay and see us, however, will you not?” said Lady Paton, advancing now in happy security. “I want a long talk with you.”

“Then I stay.”

“His majesty stays!” Camelia murmured.

“How are the tenants getting on?” asked Lady Paton, taking from the table a soft mass of white wool, and beginning to knit. She was one of those women whose hands are always uselessly and prettily busy.

“Mary and I drove past the cottages yesterday—I wish you had come, dear—you would have liked to see them. So pretty they are, among their orchards, with such beautiful gardens full of flowers.”

“Yes, don’t they look well?” said Perior, much pleased. “I am trying to get the people to devote themselves to fruit and flower growing. It pays well.”

“And do the cottages themselves pay?” Camelia inquired mischievously. “I hear that, asking the ridiculous rents you do, you need never expect to make the smallest profit—or even get back the capital expended.”

“Thank Heaven the money-making epoch of my life is over,” said Perior, folding his arms and looking at her rather defiantly.

“But what blasphemy against political economy! Cottages that don’t pay! It’s very immoral, Alceste. It is feminine. You are pauperizing your tenants.”

“I don’t at all disbelieve that a little infusion of femininity into political economy would be a very good thing. Besides, the cottages will pay in the end.”

“The rents are lower than the lowest in the village. Lord Haversham was telling me about it yesterday.”

“Oh, Haversham!” laughed Perior.

“He was very plaintive. Said that times were hard enough for landlords as it was, without your charitable visionaries and your socialistic theories.”

“The two accusations don’t fit; but of the two I prefer the latter.”

“It is a mere egotistic diversion then?”

“Yes, a purely scientific experiment.”

“And your tenants have bath-tubs, I hear. Do they use them with Pears’ soap every morning?”

“I flatter myself that they are fairly clean. That alone is an interesting experiment. Dirt, I firmly believe to be the root of all evil.”

“Ah, we come down to the bed-rock of ethics at last, don’t we? Well, how is the laboratory getting on? Have you found traces of original sin in protoplasm?”

“I think I have spotted perverse tendencies,” Perior smiled.

“What a Calvinist you are!”

“Michael a Calvinist, my dear child!” Lady Paton looked up from her knitting in amazement.

“An illogical Calvinist. Instead of burning sinners he washes them! and I’ve no doubt that to some of them the latter form of purification is as disagreeable as the former. He puts them into model cottages, with Morris wall-papers.”

“I beg your pardon. No Morris wall-papers.”

“Camelia, my dear, how extravagantly you talk,” said Lady Paton, her smile reflecting happily Perior’s good-humor. Michael did not mind the teasing—liked it perhaps; and though she did not understand she smiled. Camelia sank down to a low chair beside her mother’s, and taking her mother’s hand she held it up solemnly, saying, “Mamma, Mr. Perior is a tissue of inconsistencies. He despises humanity; and he works for it like a nigger.”

“You are an impressionist, Camelia. Don’t lay on your primaries so glaringly.”

“Confess that you are a philanthropist, though an unwilling one.”

“I confess nothing,” said Perior, looking across the room at Mary with a smile that seemed to invite her participation in his well-borne baiting.

“Is not your life one long effort to help humanity—not la sainte canaille with you—but, and hence your inconsistency, the gross