'He does not seem to know his position,' said her sister. 'Why you and your wife ought to be leaders of Society, Dane.' 'I have no objection,' said Rollo imperturbably. 'I will lead Society—if Society will follow me.' 'But if you want to lead Society, you must please Society,' said Mrs. Coles. 'That is assuming that you know which way I want Society to go.' 'Prue, you can't lead Duke,' said Primrose laughing. 'Don't you know that?' Mrs. Coles looked puzzled and stayed her questions. Rollo was putting some engravings into their frames, and in the intervals of the work displaying them to the admiration of herself and Prim. Prim's enjoyment of them was very hearty; Mrs. Coles looked on with a divided and impatient, as well as curious mind. By and by she broke forth again. 'Have you taken Hazel to hear Sacchi-süssi, the new prima donna?' 'No.' 'I can't find out that you have done anything! Well, tell me one thing, and I'll forgive you; are you and your wife going to give a grand entertainment by and by, and ask all these people you have been slighting? Of course, I do not mean _here;_ you could not do it here; but at home; by and by, at Chickaree. Will you do that?' 'I see one difficulty in the way,' said Dane, adjusting and arranging a lovely photograph of Ischl, and speaking with a negligent regard of the other subject in hand which greatly provoked his mentor. 'What can that difficulty be? You have everything—' 'One thing more than you have reckoned. I have the poor, and the maim, and the halt and the blind to look after.' 'What has that to do with the point?' 'Prior claim,—that is all.' 'But you have rich neighbours too.' 'Yes. But they are not in so much need of me.' 'My dear Dane! you are absurd.' 'Prove it'—said Dane quietly, laying Ischl out of his hands and taking up another photograph, beautifully executed, of Monteverde's marble "Genius of Franklin." This so excited Primrose's interest and curiosity, that Mrs. Coles for a little while could not get in a word. She sat, no doubt mentally cursing the fine arts, and photography which had come to multiply the fruits of them. 'Dane,' she began with restrained impatience as soon as she saw a chance, 'why cannot you attend to the rich, as well as to the poor?' 'For the way you want me to attend to the rich, time fails. And money. And I may add, strength.' 'You and Hazel have no end of money,' said Mrs. Coles impatiently. 'It will not do all we want it to do, with the best economy.' Mrs. Coles was silent a minute, remembering her two silks, one of which she had on at this very time, and how handsome they were; and her thought glanced to Prim's trunk, and the new secretaries, and the library carpet. She spoke with a somewhat lowered tone. 'Won't you ask anybody to your house, Dane, if he happens to be rich?' 'Not unless I have some other reason for asking him.—Heinert went off to-day, Hazel,'—Dane added with a change of tone.