The poetess was not delighted with this kind of society, but she never ventured to contradict her leader. "You can talk to every one I do really believe," she said. "I find it so hard to get on with people--with some people." "I feel so happy and so free here. I can say all the cynical things that please me--_you_ don't mind--and I can like or dislike as I choose." "I am afraid you dislike more than you like, Minola." "I think I could like any one who had some strong purpose in life; not the getting of money, or making a way in society. There are such, I suppose; I don't know." "When you meet my brother I am sure you will acknowledge that he has a purpose in life which is not the getting of money," said Miss Blanchet. "But you don't like men." Minola made no reply. Poor little Miss Blanchet felt so kindly to all the race of men that she did not understand how any woman could really dislike them. "I am going to do something that will please you to-morrow," Miss Grey said, feeling that she owed her companion some atonement for not warming to the mention of her brother. "I am positively going to hunt out Lucy Money. They must have returned by this time." This was really very pleasant news for Miss Blanchet. She had been longing for her friend to renew her acquaintance with Miss Lucy Money, about whom she had many dreams. It did not occur to Mary Blanchet to question directly even in her own mind the decrees of Miss Grey, or to say to herself that the course of life which they were leading was not the most delightful that could be devised. But, if the little poetess could have ventured to translate vague yearnings into definite thoughts, she would, perhaps, have acknowledged to herself a faint desire that the brilliant passages of the London career she had marked out for herself in anticipation should come rather more quickly than they just now seemed likely to do. At present there was not much difference perceptible to her between London and Duke's-Keeton. Nobody came to see them. Even her brother had not yet presented himself. Her poem did not make much progress; there was no great incentive to poetic work. Minola and she did not know any poets, or artists, or publishers. Mary Blanchet's poetic tastes were of a somewhat old-fashioned school, and did not include any particular care for looking at trees, and fields, and water, and skies, although these objects of natural beauty were made to figure in the poems a good deal in connection with, and illustrative of, the emotions of the poetess. Therefore the rambles in the park were not so delightful to her as to her leader; and when the evening set in, and Minola and she read to each other, Mary Blanchet was always rather pleased if an opportunity occurred for interrupting the reading by a talk. She was particularly anxious that Minola should renew her acquaintance with her old schoolfellow, Miss Lucy Money, whose father she understood to be somehow a great sort of person, and through whom