The great event of her life, her appearance in society, was to take place in the season following; and all through this winter Mamie was in a state of electric anticipation. She was already laying, in an innocent and girlish way, her wires. What Gracie failed chiefly to understand was these very love confidences, above mentioned: for though Mamie talked most ardently of the qualities of her successive swains, they seemed to bear a much more definite relation to her own self-love than to her heart. But then, it was her self-love that was the source of motive to her; her heart was an amusement only. And Mamie knew the world, as has before been hinted, _à priori_; she was a girl of transcendental mind, who saw through the copper-plate formulas of her study-books to the realities around her; with innate ideas and tastes as to what was fashionable and really fine. She alternately patronized and petted Gracie, who was three years older than herself; yet Gracie had more influence over her than anyone else. As for the parental authority of her father and mother--the phrase is too grotesquely mediæval to be completed. Mr. Livingstone was an old gentleman with a million and a half of property, whose manners had outlived his mind. Gracie was looking--if I could describe to you the manner of her look, you would all men be poor Arthur’s rivals, I am sure; the direction of her look was simply to the northward, through the window. The manner of it--perhaps even Arthur never wholly noted it; may be he thought all girls had it; may be he even preferred the scintillating alertness of Pussie Duval’s or Baby Malgam’s--people now called her Baby with a touch of malice--which was more new to him. It was a deep and holy radiance, as if the look’s object were not yet quite found, and a certain questioning withal. Gracie was almost sure to have it when alone; perhaps a certain exquisite if unconscious tact restrained it, with other girls, lest they should call it pose; but no man--that is, no _man_--ever saw it fairly, but his soul was turned to fire. Medusa’s look it was that turned a man to stone; but there seems to be no metaphor for this opposite one. Perhaps because the Greeks had never met with it; it is found since Hamlet and since Gretchen, and grows mostly in the country, with books, sweet thoughts, and solitude. I have more rarely met with it in crowded colleges; yet it is not absolutely inconsistent with a knowledge of Greek. “You do look so sweet, cousine,” cried Mamie as she tripped into the room, “but awfully poky. I’ve got such a thing to tell you about Mrs. Lucie Gower. And oh, do you know? Charlie Townley called here to-day. And somebody else too--aha?” “Who was it?” said Gracie.