There was no one at dinner, and the house-hold dignity, the little vivid picture of delicate repose lived long in Anastasia’s memory. Horace was an excellent host, and Edith was a loadstone for other people’s minds. She drew out their best with a silent magnetic skill, hardly participating so much as forming an atmosphere in which it was very pleasant and easy to speak. “I always could say anything to Edith,” observed Anastasia to her host, “but I had quite supposed that I should have to talk to you.” Horace laughed. “We’re so simple and dull,” he said. “We are like an old tune to a practised singer; we give her an easy swing.” “Oh, you’re not dull,” said Anastasia; “it’s rather an art to be as simple as all this, and I’ve never met it in my own people. We’re smart, we’re clever, we’re attractive, we’re the most charming people in the world, but we’re not simple.” “You can’t expect a young nation to have the quality of an old shoe,” said Horace. “English people have done the same things for a very long time. They stand on the basis of habit. Now all the Americans I ever met wanted to be individual, personal, impressive--and they very often were. When they were not, it was rather a strain to listen to them; but we don’t want, as a rule, to be like that; it amuses us to have people do it for us; but I expect that in our heart of hearts we don’t think it very solid. There’s something in finding such an easy old track, and knowing that among your own class you’ll find the same talk, the same purpose, the same _genre_. I’m not sure it isn’t good for conversation as well, because it makes you less self-conscious. You start with so much that can be taken for granted.” Helen gave him a good deal of attention; she was thinking the man out; he wasn’t in the least like his son, nor had she expected him to be. She had imagined him to be good, solid, dull, and probably a shrewd man of business; now she saw that only her first two adjectives held. He might not see everything, but he saw what he looked at. The trouble really began in his never having looked at his wife. He had accepted her, proposed to her, married her, and she had done all the rest. The chances were that she would go on doing it till she died, unless some one interfered. “What he wants,” said Helen of Troy to herself, as she continued the conversation, “is a shaking, and that is what he is going to get.” After dinner Horace accompanied them to his smoking-room, and Anastasia cleared the field. “Edith,” she said, “do you remember my giving you an old silk shawl when we stayed on the lakes; it was pretty, and warm, and soft, and fresh, like one of the little clouds we used to see hover over the lovely garden? I have an idea I want that shawl back to keep always; do you know where it is?” Edith shook her head. “At the bottom of one of my old trunks I expect, where I keep my treasures,” she said. “I could send it to you, perhaps.”