Charlotte Slayback appeared at luncheon. She preferred that meal when she invited herself, because her father was never present, and a certain amount of peaceful conversation was possible in his absence. It was some time since she had been in New York, and the glimpse of her old room on the previous afternoon irresistibly attracted her again. Katharine hoped, however, that she would not stay long, as Ralston was to come at three o’clock, this being usually the safest hour for his visits. Mrs. Lauderdale would then be either at work or out of the house, the philanthropist would be dozing upstairs in a cloud of smoke before a table covered with reports, and Alexander Junior would be still down town. In consideration of the importance of getting Charlotte out of the way, Katharine was more than usually cordial to her--a mistake often made by young people, who do not seem to understand the very simple fact that the best way to make people go away is generally to be as disagreeable as possible. The consequence was that Charlotte enjoyed herself immensely, and it required the sight of her father’s photograph, which stood upon Mrs. Lauderdale’s writing-table in the library, to keep her from proposing to spend two or three days in the house after her husband should have gone back to Washington. But the photograph was there, and it was one taken by the platinum process, which made the handsome, steely face look more metallic than ever. Charlotte gazed at it thoughtfully, and could almost hear the maxims of virtue and economy with which those even lips had preached her down since she had been a child, and she decided that she would not stay. Her husband was not to her taste, but he never preached.