"I ought not to have brought up the subject," she said, "knowing as I do how you feel about such discussions, but I love you so much that sometimes I can't help--" "Alice," exclaimed the girl, "please have the kindness to call me a selfish P--I--G. It will relieve my feelings." "But I do not think you are," said Mrs. Carling literally. "But I am at times," declared Mary, "and you deserve not only to have, but to be shown, all the love and confidence that I can give you. It's only this, that sometimes your solicitude makes you imagine things that do not exist, and you think I am withholding my confidence; and then, again, I am enough like other people that I don't always know exactly what I do think. Now, about this matter--" "Don't say a word about it, dear," her sister interrupted, "unless you would rather than not." "I wish to," said Mary. "Of course I am not oblivious of the fact that Mr. Lenox comes here very often, nor that he seems to like to stay and talk with me, because, don't you know, if he didn't he could go when you do, and I don't mind admitting that, as a general thing, I like to have him stay; but, as I said to you, if it weren't for Julius he would not come here very often." "Don't you think," said Mrs. Carling, now on an assured footing, "that if it were not for you he would not come so often?" Perhaps Mary overestimated the attraction which her brother-in-law had for Mr. Lenox, and she smiled slightly as she thought that it was quite possible. "I suppose," she went on, with a little shrug of the shoulders, "that the proceeding is not strictly conventional, and that the absolutely correct thing would be for him to say good night when you and Julius do, and that there are those who would regard my permitting a young man in no way related to me to see me very often in the evening without the protection of a duenna as a very unbecoming thing." "I never have had such a thought about it," declared Mrs. Carling. "I never for a moment supposed you had, dear," said Mary, "nor have I. We are rather unconventional people, making very few claims upon society, and upon whom 'society' makes very few." "I am rather sorry for that on your account," said her sister. "You needn't be," was the rejoinder. "I have no yearnings in that direction which are not satisfied with what I have." She sat for a minute or two with her hands clasped upon her knee, gazing reflectively into the fire, which, in the growing darkness of the winter afternoon, afforded almost the only light in the room. Presently she became conscious that her sister was regarding her with an air of expectation, and resumed: "Leaving the question of the conventions out of the discussion as settled," she said, "there is nothing, Alice, that you need have any concern about, either on Mr. Lenox's account or mine." "You like him, don't you?" asked Mrs. Carling.