It had been on his lips to say something to her of his satisfaction that she had undertaken the charge of his nieces; to give her even, should he have an opportunity, a little advice about these children. But something in her manner made it impossible for him to carry out his intention. A certain unconscious taking-for-granted of perfect equality in their positions. An utter absence of anything like the feeling of dependence in her whole air and bearing. Nothing presuming, nothing affected. She was evidently quite at her ease, and accustomed to feel so. Anything more unlike the shrinking, modest young governess he had, from his mother’s description, expected to meet, it was utterly impossible to imagine. He could not make her out. “Whoever she is she cannot have been brought up with the idea of occupying a dependent position,” he said to himself, and then thought no more about it; but gave himself up to the, to him, rare pleasure of spending an hour with two agreeable women, one of whom was lively and amusing, and the other something more than either. What he could, not exactly say. Not beautiful, not brilliant, not fascinating. What then? Something that suited and interested him, something original, unlike what he had seen in other women; and so unconscious, so artless, so thoroughly womanly. Over and over again he found himself asking, “Where lay the charm?” Grey eyes, brown hair, sweet voice, sweeter smile, which of you all has to answer for it? None, yet all. A something including and surpassing all these, a something so subtle and indefinable, that not in all the long roll of years since this old world began, has poet breathed or minstrel sung, words, which, to those who have never felt it for themselves, can in the least picture or describe this strange, sweet, sad mystery. Poor Ralph! It was only the beginning of the old, old story, after all, little though he thought it, that pleasant afternoon, when he sat in Mrs. Archer’s pretty drawing room, talking lightly and merrily even, with these two. Of books and flowers and music; of all manner of things under the sun, it little mattered what. Marion somehow had a knack of understanding one’s words almost before they were uttered. She said the right things in the right way. At least, when she felt she was with those who, on their side, liked and understood her. How they all three talked and laughed, agreed and argued! Ralph, walking home, thought what a pleasant, refreshing afternoon be had spent. After all he was glad to find he was not yet so old and stiff but that he could now and then unbend a little. Of course, when in company with younger and more brilliant men, he could not expect to be so made of and entertained as he had been today. But for once in a way it was a pleasant change. And then he fell to thinking how strange it was that he should be so different from other men.