"There was one," Matilda added timorously, "who drew me aside and whispered that he didn't want an interview. He wants your picture." "Wants my picture!" exclaimed Mrs. De Peyster. "Yes, ma'am. He said the pictorial supplement of his paper a week from Sunday was going to have a page of pictures of prominent society women who were sailing for Europe. He said something about calling the page 'Annual Exodus of Social Leaders.' He wants to print that painting of you by that new foreign artist in the center of the page." And Matilda pointed above the fireplace to a gold-framed likeness of Mrs. De Peyster--stately, aloof, remote, of an ineffable composure, a masterpiece of blue-bloodedness. "You know my invariable custom; give him my invariable answer," was Mrs. De Peyster's crisp response. "Pardon me, but--but, Cousin Caroline," put in Olivetta, with eager diffidence, "don't you think this is different?" "Different?" asked Mrs. De Peyster. "How?" "This isn't at all like the ordinary offensive newspaper thing. A group of the most prominent social leaders, with you in the center of the page--with you in the center of them all, where you belong! Why, Caroline,--why--why--" In her excitement for the just glorification of her cousin, Olivetta's power of speech went fluttering from her. "Perhaps it may not be quite the same," admitted Mrs. De Peyster. "But I see no reason for departing from my custom." "If not for your own sake, then--then for the artist's sake!" Olivetta pursued, a little more eagerly, and a little more of diffidence in her eagerness. "You have taken up M. Dubois--you have been his most distinguished patron--you have been trying to get him properly started. To have his picture displayed like that, think how it will help M. Dubois!" Mrs. De Peyster gave Olivetta a sharp look, as though she questioned the entire disinterestedness of this argument; then she considered an instant; and in the main it was her human instinct to help a struggling fellow being that dictated her decision. "Matilda, you may give the man a photograph of the picture. And as I treat the papers without discrimination, you may give photographs to all the reporters who wish them. But on the understanding that M. Dubois is to have conspicuous credit." "Very well, ma'am." "And send all of them away." "I'll do what I can, ma'am." And Matilda went out. "What time does the Plutonia sail?" inquired Olivetta, with the haste of one who is trying to get off of very thin ice. "At one to-night. Matilda will get me a bit of dinner and I shall go aboard right after it." "How many times does this make that you've been over?" "I do not know," Mrs. De Peyster answered carelessly. "Thirty or forty, I dare say." Olivetta's face was wistful with unenvious envy. "Oh, what a pleasure!" "Going to Europe, Olivetta, is hardly a pleasure," corrected Mrs. De Peyster. "It is a duty one owes one's social position."