the young lady by name at luncheon she had talked a great deal of influences and and had between apologies for the mutton and affected surprise that the bewildered maid servant should have forgotten to serve the coffee and m usual was almost sorry that he had come miss was still beautiful � almost as beautiful as when two days earlier against the leafy background of a june garden party he had seen her for the first time � but her mother s and her beauty as sign posts a solitude mrs s eye was perpetually between her daughter and like an empty cab a coward in quest of a miss the young man decided was the kind of girl whose surroundings off on her or was it rather that mrs s were of a nature to color every one within reach looking across the table as this alternative occurred to him was sure that they had not colored mr but that perhaps was only because they had him instead mr car style was quite it would have been impossible to guess his native tint his wife s qualities if they had affected him at all had acted he did not for the mutton and he wandered off after luncheon without pretending to wait for the coffee and while the few remarks that he had contributed to the conversation during the meal had not been in the direction of abstract of life as he strayed away with his vague step and the stoop that suggested the habit of who was still in the age of found himself wondering what life could be worth to a man who had evidently resigned himself to travelling with his back to the wind so that mrs s allusion to her daughter s lack of advantages imparted while searched the house for an had an by the speaker if mr had chosen that lady repeated a coward we might have had our city home she never used so small a word as town and could have mixed in the society to which i myself was accustomed at her age her sigh pointed to a past when young men had come to luncheon to see her the sigh led to look at her and the look led him to the unwelcome conclusion that took after her mother it was certainly not from the paternal stock that the girl had drawn her warm bloom mrs had contributed the high lights to the picture mrs caught his look and appropriated it with the complacency of a beauty she was quite aware of the value of her appearance as s development into a fine woman but perhaps she continued taking up the thread of her explanation you have heard of mr s extraordinary mr knows that i call it so � as i tell him it is the most charitable view to take she looked coldly at the sofa and at the young man who filled a comer of it you may think it odd mr that i should take you into my confidence in this way after so short an acquaintance but somehow i can t help regarding you as a friend already i believe in those don t you they have never me � r a coward her drooped � and besides i always tell mr that on this point i will have no false where truth is concerned i am inexorable and i consider it my duty to let our friends know that our way of living is due entirely to choice � to mr s choice when i married mr it was with the expectation of living in new york and of keeping my carriage and there is no reason for our not doing so � there is no reason mr why my daughter should have been denied the intellectual advantages of foreign travel i wish that to be understood it is owing to her father s deliberate choice that and i have been imprisoned in the narrow limits of society for myself i do not complain if mr chooses to place others before his wife it is not for his wife to his course may be noble � i do not allow myself to pronounce judgment on it though others have thought that in sacrificing his own family to strangers he was the most sacred obligations of domestic life this is the opinion of my and of other valued friends but as i have always told them for myself i make no claims where my daughter is concerned it is different � it was a relief to when at this mrs s discharge of her duty was cut short by her daughter s had been unable to a coward find a for mr and her mother with beaming suggested that in that case she had better show him the garden the house stood but a few yards back from the brick paved street and the garden was a very small place unless measured as mrs probably intended that it should be by the extent of her daughter s charms these were so considerable that walked back and forward half a dozen times between the porch and the gate before he discovered the of the domain it was not till had accused him of being sarcastic and had confided in him that the girls were furious with her for letting him talk to her so long at his aunt s garden party that he awoke to the of his surroundings and then it was with a touch of irritation that he noticed mr s bent above a newspaper in one of the lower windows had an idea that mr while reading the paper had kept count of the number of times that his daughter had led her companion up and down between the bushes and for some reason he resented mr s observation more than his wife s zealous self to a man who is 