“A matter of taste, Helen,” admitted Miss Carrington. “I was bred up in old-fashioned conservatism. I can theorize; I don’t mind the new ideas in print, on the stage, provided they are cleverly put, but I admit that I like to see young women what I was trained to consider well-mannered. I don’t defend my inconsistency; I’m explaining myself.” “Atavism; Shintoism,” said Helen, carelessly. “No one is consistent. Taste is stronger than principles, I’ve always noticed that. It will take two generations to get our mental clothing fitted, and by that time the fashion will probably swing back; that’s the way it works. You’ve got your grandmother’s and mother’s minds grafted on your mind. You’ve survived; you were born before the old ways had passed. But to return to our muttons, which means the Dallas lambkin: Richard Latham is in love with her himself.” “Oh, Helen, do you think so?” cried Miss Carrington. “Know so,” Helen corrected her. “And I warned Kit. I went so far as to try to ingraft upon his trusting mind the suggestion that no one would snatch her from a man so important to the world, so afflicted as the poet. I hoped that it would seem to him later that he had thought of that himself. And, really, Miss Carrington, Richard Latham is a peach of a man, aside from his poetry. He is charming; modest, clever, gentle, and you feel that he is stainless. I wondered for a moment if it wouldn’t be worth while rescuing him, instead of Kit, from the little Dallas? I could put him on a pinnacle, give him the rewards of his genius while he lived, instead of after he is dead. I could do it alone, and I am always plus father. But I decided it would be a pity to waste my looks on a blind man.” “Your conceit is so colossal, Helen Abercrombie, that it is raised above ordinary weaknesses,” declared Miss Carrington, energetically. “Dear Aunt-elect, you are quite right. I do not think that I am in any way a small woman. If you call it conceit, so be it. But if I did not know that I am handsome I should be a fool, and like the fool say in my heart that ‛all men are liars.’ I am clever. Experience teaches me that, and my will is not easily downed. You may call it colossal conceit, but I call it an intelligent appraisal of myself. I know that I can do for the man I marry what few women can do, and that I shall do it, and I do think it would be a pity if my husband could not see me.” Helen ended her frank speech with a downward glance at her generously displayed beauty. It was her complete disregard of any sort of concealment that shocked the elder woman, who had been trained in the reserved manners of what used to be called “a gentlewoman.” Miss Carrington realized that in this she was at variance with her views which admitted freedom, equality, the right of every human being to be and to do what he, and she, as much, saw fit. But the application of the theory, especially in the case of a fair young girl, hurt her.