“Oh, it has got his tone,” I said, laughing, and insisting on my point the more that Mrs. Ambient appeared to see in my appreciation of her simple establishment a sign of limited experience. It was evident that I insisted too much. “His tone?” she repeated, with a quick look at me, and a slightly heightened color. “Surely he has a tone, Mrs. Ambient” “Oh, yes, he has indeed! But I don’t in the least consider that I am living in one of his books; I should n’t care for that, at all,” she went on, with a smile which had in some degree the effect of converting her slightly sharp protest into a joke deficient in point “I am afraid I am not very literary,” said Mrs. Ambient. “And I am not artistic.” “I am very sure you are not ignorant, not stupid,” I ventured to reply, with the accompaniment of feeling immediately afterwards that I had been both familiar and patronizing. My only consolation was in the reflection that it was she, and not I, who had begun it She had brought her idiosyncrasies into the discussion. “Well, whatever I am, I am very different from my husband. If you like him, you won’t like me. You need n’t say anything. Your liking me is n’t in the least necessary!” “Don’t defy me!” I exclaimed. She looked as if she had not heard me, which was the best thing she could do; and we sat some time without further speech. Mrs. Ambient had evidently the enviable English quality of being able to be silent without being restless. But at last she spoke; she asked me if there seemed to be many people in town. I gave her what satisfaction I could on this point, and we talked a little about London and of some pictures it presented at that time of the year. At the end of this I came back, irrepressibly, to Mark Ambient.