“No, I am not going over in the Winthrop’s yacht, nor am I going coaching with them through Ireland,” she would explain. “I do not mean to travel much. I intend to study seriously. Of course, I shall take my summers off and enjoy myself, but I have a serious end in view, which I must not lose sight of.” Miss Hungerford had a rather classic face, and looked like a true Spartan when she would say that. Her friends would be either dumb with admiration at such explanations or, sometimes, the more venturesome would try to lure her from her purpose. But she only looked with pity on such attempts. She was away two years, and although she had tried to keep up with her friends, on returning she found a great many of them married and more or less occupied with affairs which had no part in her life. This saddened her very much and made her more than ever determined to pursue her “career.” She had very few difficulties to contend with. There had been one slight interruption. While in Paris the young Comte de la Tour, whom she had first met at the American minister’s, had taken up a great deal of her time. When he proposed, she had refused him so calmly that she felt justified in admiring herself. She was rather mortified, however, on thinking it over, to find that for a whole month afterward she had not been able to fix her mind on anything serious, and had accepted a great many invitations out. This taught her a lesson. She had discovered that “to be serious, to do her best work, men must not divert her thoughts.” She wrote that down in her commonplace book, so that it would be a perpetual warning to her. When she got home, her mother and father were delighted to find her no more changed. They had feared the worst from her letters. Her mother, hearing that old English script was very hard on the eyesight, had, after a good cry, resigned herself to glasses. She was intensely relieved to find that there was no occasion for her resignation, and in her happiness to find that Beowulf had not injured her daughter’s vision, herself helped to select a teak desk and bookcases for a “private study” for her. She even sanctioned an edition in pomona green and gold, of the French tragedy and sonnets. These books were not as much reviewed as Miss Hungerford had thought they would be, but her friends admired them intensely and generally came to her with them, that she might write her name on the title-page. But scarcely had the room been arranged for hard work (Miss Hungerford had determined to spend the next few months in writing a curtain-raiser for Daly’s), when another and more serious interruption occurred.