"Miss Gastonguay, you are kind-hearted. Don't think it strange of me if I beg that, for a time, you will not exercise your hospitality so freely with respect to him." "Hoity-toity, am I a frivolous snare to the rising generation? Go to Mrs. Jonah Potts, young man." "It is not that,--you understand me. Your surroundings remind him of former days. If he is left to his flock for a time he may--" Miss Gastonguay would give him no promise. "Stop, Justin Mercer, there is your wife closing her book; it is time for you to take her home." Justin got up, waited until Derrice said good night, and then followed her from the room. Captain Veevers took charge of Aurelia, Mr. Huntington remained leaning on the piano and listening, without speaking, to Chelda, who played interminably. Derrice was very quiet on their way down the avenue, and Justin at last asked the question, "Did you enjoy yourself, dolly?" "Oh, yes,--I go out so little now that I appreciate small pleasures,--not that I am unhappy," she added, clinging closer to him. "Oh, no, I like to live quietly. I was thinking of Miss Chelda. She was so sweet, asking if she might come soon and see me, yet I have an impression that she does not like me. She seems to be always watching me." "She reminded me of a snake as she moved about the room in that spotted gown," said Justin, musingly. Derrice, at this, laughed so heartily that Aurelia, coming behind with Captain Veevers, begged to know the cause of her mirth. "Only a ridiculous speech of my husband," she said; "not worth repeating." Justin paused, in order to allow the others to catch up to them. How strange were the differing mental characteristics in one family. Derrice and Miss Gastonguay were singularly alike in their honest vivacity. Both were incapacitated by their intellectual make-up from understanding the hidden motives of so deep a soul as Chelda's. Derrice was gazing back at the lighted house. "How delightfully foreign it is!" Aurelia, too, looked back, but her thought was not of the house, and her thin lips trembled as she murmured, "Yes." Captain Veevers did not speak, but Justin said, decidedly, "I do not like it." "Why not?" asked his wife, in surprise. "Because I do not believe in Americans aping foreign architecture. We have our own style, the colonial. Why should we not cultivate that? We are neither Dutch, nor Chinese, nor French. Why should we live in their houses? They do not live in ours." "I never thought of that," said his wife. "I like the sentiment." "And educating children abroad," continued Justin, "I think it is a custom fraught with bad results. Boys and girls educated abroad wish to stay abroad, or they come home prating as Chelda Gastonguay used to do of 'perfect Europe,' and 'charming foreign manners.'" "'If it only came from Paris, darling Paris, lovely Paris, I would buy it,' said Miss Harris, 'If it only came from Paris.'"