The knowledge produced a sort of embarrassment to begin with. Minola was about to throw her soul into the sacrifice, and greet her friend's brother with the utmost cordiality. But she had pictured to herself a sort of Mary Blanchet in trousers, a gentle, old-fashioned, timid person, whom, perhaps, the outer world was apt to misprize, if not even to snub, and whom therefore it became her, Minola Grey, as an enemy and outlaw of the common world, to receive with double consideration. But this brilliant, self-conceited, affected, oppressively handsome young man, on whom she had seen Lucy Money and her mother hanging devotedly, was quite another sort of person. His presence seemed to overcharge the room; the scene became all compound of tall, bending form and dark eyes. "I am glad to see you, Mr. Blanchet," Miss Grey began, determined not to be put out by any self-conceited poet and ideal of schoolgirls. "I must be glad to see you, because you are Mary's brother." "You ought rather to be not glad to see me for that reason," he said, with a deprecating bow and a slight shrug of the shoulders, "for I have been a very neglectful brother to Mary." "So I have heard," Miss Grey said, "but not from Mary. She always defended you. But I have seen you before, Mr. Blanchet, have I not?" "At Mrs. Money's yesterday? Oh, yes; I only saw you, Miss Grey. I went there to see you, and only in the most literal way got what I wanted." "But, Herbert, you never told me that you were going, or that you knew Mrs. Money," his sister interposed. "No, dear; that was an innocent deceit on my part. You told me that Miss Grey had gone there, and as I knew the Moneys I hurried away there without telling you. I wanted to know what you were like, Miss Grey, before seeing my sister again. I hope you are not angry? She is so devoted to you that she painted you in colors the most bewitching; but I was afraid her friendship was carrying her away, and I wanted to see for myself when she was not present." Miss Grey remained resolutely silent. She thought this beginning particularly disagreeable, and began to fear that she should never be able to like Mary Blanchet's brother. "Oh, why do women have brothers?" she asked herself. There seemed something dishonest in Mr. Blanchet's proceeding despite the frank completeness of his confession. "Well, Herbert, confess that I didn't do her justice; didn't do her common justice," the enthusiastic Mary exclaimed. "If Miss Grey would not be offended," her brother said, "I would say that I see in her just the woman capable of doing the kind and generous things I have heard of." "Yes; but we mustn't talk about it," the poetess said, with tears of gratefulness blinking in her eyes; "and we'll not say a word more about it, Minola; not a word, indeed, dear." And she put a deprecating little hand upon Minola's arm.