As the matter progressed it appeared that social introduction, as Uncle Austen understood it, was largely a matter of expenditure. In all investment it is the expected thing to place where there is likeliest return. Therefore he scanned the invitation list earnestly. "She can afford to do the thing as it should be done," he remarked to Harriet. "She? But Austen--" Harriet hesitated. "I supposed it was ours, this affair; it seems the least--" Austen looked at her. At first he did not comprehend, then he replied with some asperity. "I have so far kept sentiment and business apart in managing Alexina's affairs." Harriet was silenced. It was becoming less and less wise to oppose Austen. He had his own ideas about the matter. "The thing is to be done handsomely," he set forth, "but," as qualification, "judiciously." Therefore he stopped an acquaintance on the street a day or two before the affair. "Are we to have the pleasure of seeing you on Tuesday?" he asked, even a little ostentatiously, for the young man had neglected to accept or decline. Austen reported the result to Harriet. "For there is no use ordering a supper for five hundred if but four hundred and ninety-nine are coming," he told her. "No?" said Harriet. "Exactly," said her brother. Alexina, present at the conversation, looked from the one to the other. Uncle Austen was Uncle Austen; there was a slight lift of the girlish shoulders as she admitted this. But Aunt Harriet-- For Harriet had changed. She had been changing these past two summers. She was absent, forgetful, absorbed, even irritable. Aunt Harriet! And recalled, she would colour and look about in startled fashion. Alexina and Harriet had been always on terms friendly and pleasant, but scarcely to be called intimate; terms that, after a cordial good-night, closed the door between their rooms, and while the girl had been conscious of a fondness for her serene and capable aunt, there were times too, when, met by that same serenity, she had felt she must rebel, and in secret had thrown her young arms out in impotent, passionate protest. But now Aunt Harriet forgot and neglected and grew cross like any one, and the sententious utterances of Uncle Austen irritated her. Alexina, going into her room one day, found her with her head bowed on the desk. Was she crying? The girl slipped out. Was Aunt Harriet unhappy? The heart of Alexina warmed to her. The evening of Alexina's return home Harriet had come to her door. To twenty years thirty-eight seems pitiably far along in life, yet Harriet called up no such feeling in Alexina. No passion of living writ itself on Galatea's check while she was in marble, and Alexina, opening the door to the tap, thought her aunt beautiful. "If there are callers to-night," Harriet said, "I want you to come down. My friends are not too elderly," she smiled in the old, good-humoured way, "to be nice to you this winter."