There was no doubt that Mr. Drummond had fully enjoyed his visit. Nevertheless, as he left Brooklyn, and set his face towards the White House, his manner changed, and his face became somewhat grave. He had told himself that he owed it to his pastoral conscience to call on Mrs. Cheyne; but, notwithstanding this monition, he disliked the duty, for he always felt on these occasions that he was hardly up to his office, and that this solitary member of his flock was not disposed to yield herself to his guidance. He was ready to pity her if she would allow herself to be pitied; but any expression of sympathy seemed repugnant to her. Any one so utterly lonely, so absolutely without interest in existence, he had never seen or thought to see; and yet he could not bring himself to like her, or to say more than the mere commonplace utterances of society. Though he was her clergyman, and bound by the sacredness of his office to be specially tender to the bruised and maimed ones of his flock, he could not get her to acknowledge her maimed condition to him, or to do anything but listen to him with cold attention, when he hinted vaguely that all human beings are in need of sympathy. Perhaps she thought him too young, and feared to find his judgments immature and one-sided; but certainly his visits to the White House were failures. Mrs. Cheyne was still young enough and handsome enough to need some sort of chaperonage: and though she professed to mock at conventionality, she acknowledged its claims in this respect by securing the permanent services of Miss Mewlstone--a lady of uncertain age and uncertain acquirements. It must be confessed that every one wondered at Mrs. Cheyne and her choice, for no one could be less companionable than Miss Mewlstone. She was a stout, sleepy-looking woman, with a soft voice, and in placidity and a certain cosyness of exterior somewhat resembled a large white cat. Some people declared she absolutely purred, and certainly her small blue eyes were ready to close on all occasions. She always dressed in gray,--a very unbecoming color to a stout person,--and when not asleep or reading (for she was a great reader) she seemed always busy with a mass of soft fleecy wool. No one heard her ever voluntarily conversing with her patroness. They would drive together for hours, or pass whole evenings in the same room, scarcely exchanging a word. "Just so, my dear," she would say, in return to any observation made to her by Mrs. Cheyne. "Just so Mewlstone," a young wag once nicknamed her. People stared incredulously when Mrs. Cheyne assured them her companion was a very superior woman. They thought it was only her satire, and did not believe her in the least. They would have stared still more if they had really known the extent of Miss Mewlstone's acquirements. "She seems so stupid, as though she cannot talk," one of Mrs. Cheyne's friends said.