“Oh, hang it all! Look here, Conny,--I wish you'd just try for once to find out some good in that family, besides what that sentimental young widower John Milton may have. You seem to think because they've quarreled with HIM there isn't a virtue left among them.” Far from seeming to offer any suggestion of feminine retaliation, Mrs. Ashwood smiled sweetly. “My dear Jack, I have no desire to keep you from trying your luck again with Miss Clementina, if that's what you mean, and indeed I shouldn't be surprised if a family who felt a mesalliance as sensitively as the Harcourts felt that affair of their son's, would be as keenly alive to the advantages of a good match for their daughter. As to young Mr. Harcourt, he never talked to me of the vices of his family, nor has he lately troubled me much with the presence of his own virtues. I haven't heard from him since we came here.” “I suppose he is satisfied with the government berth you got for him,” returned her brother dryly. “He was very grateful to Senator Flynn, who appreciates his talents, but who offered it to him as a mere question of fitness,” replied Mrs. Ashwood with great precision of statement. “But you don't seem to know he declined it on account of his other work.” “Preferred his old Bohemian ways, eh? You can't change those fellows, Conny. They can't get over the fascinations of vagabondage. Sorry your lady-patroness scheme didn't work. Pity you couldn't have promoted him in the line of his profession, as the Grand Duchess of Girolstein did Fritz.” “For Heaven's sake, Jack, go to Clementina! You may not be successful, but there at least the perfect gentlemanliness and good taste of your illustrations will not be thrown away.” “I think of going to San Francisco tomorrow, anyway,” returned Jack with affected carelessness. “I'm getting rather bored with this wild seaside watering place and its glitter of ocean and hopeless background of mountain. It's nothing to me that 'there's no land nearer than Japan' out there. It may be very healthful to the tissues, but it's weariness to the spirit, and I don't see why we can't wait at San Francisco till the rains send us further south, as well as here.” He had walked to the balcony of their sitting-room in the little seaside hotel where this conversation took place, and gazed discontentedly over the curving bay and sandy shore before him. After a slight pause Mrs. Ashwood stepped out beside him. “Very likely I may go with you,” she said, with a perceptible tone of weariness. “We will see after the post arrives.” “By the way, there is a little package for you in my room, that came this morning. I brought it up, but forgot to give it to you. You'll find it on my table.”