He was casting about in his own mind for some weighty sentence with which to answer her; but she again broke in upon his silence: "It seems that I am to escape to-day. I hope you are not a lax disciplinarian; that comes of being young. Youth is more tolerant, they say, of other people's errors: it has its own glass houses to mind." "You are too clever for me, Mrs. Cheyne," returned the young man, with a deprecating smile that might have disarmed her. "No, I have not come to lecture: my mission is perfectly peaceful, as befits this lovely afternoon. I wonder what you ladies find to do all day?" he continued, abruptly changing the subject, and trying to find something that would not attract her satire. Mrs. Cheyne seemed a little taken aback by this direct question; and then she drew up her beautiful head a little haughtily, and laughed. "Ah, you are cunning, Mr. Drummond. You found me disposed to take the offensive in the matter of church-going, and now you are on another track. There is a lecture somewhere in the background. How doth the little busy bee, etc. Now, don't frown,"--as Mr. Drummond knitted his brows and really looked annoyed: "I will not refuse to be catechised." "I should not presume to catechise you," he returned, hastily. "I appeal to Miss Mewlstone if my question were not a very innocent one." "Just so; just so," replied Miss Mewlstone; but she looked a little alarmed at this appeal. "Oh, very innocent; oh, very so." "With two against me I must yield," returned Mrs. Cheyne, with a curl of her lip. "What do we do with our time, Miss Mewlstone? Your occupation speaks for itself: it is exquisitely feminine. Don't tell Miss Mattie, Mr. Drummond, but I never work. I would as soon arm myself with a dagger as a needle or a pair of scissors. When I am not in the air, I paint. I only lay aside my palette for a book." "You paint!" exclaimed Archie, with sudden interest. It was the first piece of information he had yet gleaned. "Yes," she returned, indifferently: "one must do something to kill time, and music was never my forte. I sketch and draw and paint after my own sweet will. There are portfolios full of my sketches in there,"--with a movement of her hand towards a curtained recess. "No, I know what you are going to say: you will ask to see them; but I never show them to any one." "For what purpose, then, do you paint them?" were the words on his lips; but he forbore to utter them. But she read the question in his eyes. "Did I not say one must kill time?" she returned, rather irritably: "the occupation is soothing: surely that is reason enough." "It is a good enough reason, I suppose," he replied, reluctantly, for surely he must say a word here; "but one need not talk about killing time, with so much that one could do." Then there came a gleam of suppressed mischief in her eyes: