I picked a careful way through the jungle of their useless possessions. The apartment was cluttered with “things,” the heterogeneous collection of the Victorian travelling female. They proved their culture by visible evidence of the number of countries in which they had shopped, and, the spoils requiring perches, there were too many cabinets against the walls and too many tables crowding the floor. Everything was handsome, and the effect was as a blow on the head. I accepted a cup of tea, a beverage for which I harbour a vicious dislike, and found that at once my mind was tinged with jaundiced opposition to whatever they intended saying. That they had prepared a line of discussion I saw plainly. I was not to be left in doubt. The elder Miss Ingoldsby at once said: “My dear Mrs. Avery, what do you think of Nicholas Van Suydam having married Eva Litchfield? Do you believe that they have even a slim chance at happiness?” Between the Misses Ingoldsby lay a matter or five or six years of added experience for Miss Augusta. As was only proper, therefore, Miss Augusta had long ago assumed entire charge of Miss Lois’ mind and body. The sisters were so unlike that their friends never ceased admiring the further differentiation of them by the precisely right baptismal names. Miss Augusta had a firm and upright character; suitably, her figure was large and firmly handsome. Her splendidly preserved face bore more than a trace of that coldly regular, pink-and-white beauty brought into fashion by Lillian Russell. Her silver hair, of which she retained an abundance, her good skin, her profile, her impressive voice and the weight of her emphasis on her own remarks, served to make Miss Augusta an asset at dinner-parties, although the truth was that she could, and did, out-talk the hardiest. During the period of the early Nineties, she had had a romance which had served to add to her stature as a model woman: she had fallen in love with a married man, and had then taken herself in hand. Her heart, however, proving the only thing beyond her control and remaining true to this implanted image, her abounding energy had had to seek an outlet which should not be disloyal to the image. By way of securing this outlet, she developed into the complete letter-writer of her generation; and this accomplishment, once so obligatory with her class, had never been permitted to run to seed. When the rush of the times had left her with no correspondents because she wrote too often for modern persons to find the time to reply, she took to writing, on world causes, to all individuals who had done things either good or bad; the merit or discredit of their performances made no difference, as in any case what she wanted was to air her own views.