The door opened and Amy came in. She was a tall gaunt woman who looked a great deal older than her brother. She did not make the best of herself, brushing her thin black hair straight back from her bony forehead. She had a habit of half closing her eyes when she peered at some one as though she could not see. She should, long ago, have worn spectacles, but from some strange half-conscious vanity had always refused to do so. Every year her sight grew worse. She was wearing now a dress of black silk, very badly made, cut to display her long skinny neck and bony shoulders. She wore her clothes as though she struggled between a disdain for such vanities and a desire to appear attractive. Her manner of twisting her eyelids and wrinkling her nose gave her a peevish expression, but, behind that, there was a hint of pathos, a half-seen glimpse of a soul that desired friendship and affection. She was very tall and there was something masculine in the long angularity of her limbs. She offered a strange contrast to the broad and ruddy Martin. There was, however, something in the eyes of each--some sudden surprised almost visionary flash that came and went that showed them to be the children of the same father. To Mrs. Warlock they bore no resemblance whatever. Amy stopped when she saw her brother as though she had not expected him to be there. "Well, Martin," she said--then came forward and sat in a chair opposite her mother. "Mr. Thurston's coming to suppar," she said. Martin frowned. "Oh, hang it, what for?" he cried. "He's taking me to Miss Aries' Bible meeting," Amy answered coldly. "What a baby you are about people, Martin. I should have thought all your living abroad so much would have made you understanding. But you're like the rest. You must have every one cut to the same pattern." Martin looked up for a moment as though he would answer angrily; then he controlled himself and said, laughing: "I suppose I have my prejudices like every one else. I daresay Thurston's a very good sort of fellow, but we don't like one another, and there's an end of it, Everybody can't like everybody, Amy--why, even you don't like every one." "No, I don't," she answered shortly. She looked for an instant at her mother. Martin caught the glance that passed between them, and suddenly the discomfort of which he had been aware as he stood, half an hour before, in the street, returned to him with redoubled force. What was the matter with everybody? What had he done? "Well, I'll go and change," he said. "Dinner will be ready in ten minutes, dear," said his mother. "I'll be in time all right," he said.