“Hating women! Well, I can’t say he pays them much attention. I don’t suppose he ever looked at a woman in his life!” There was certainly a touch of bitterness in this speech, and Mrs. Elles was delighted. “Not married then!” she exclaimed. “And yet, I should say that he is not obtuse to the charm of material things--that he is even a great lover of beauty--in the abstract, then, I suppose. Nature--you said he was a landscape painter, didn’t you? Does he never put people into his pictures--never put you, for instance?” Egidia laughed. “No? Well, I must say I don’t care for pictures without any human interest at all.” “Then you wouldn’t care for Edmund Rivers’ work, unless you could get your romance out of the scarred, weather-beaten face of an old windmill or a ruined castle! He leaves the human interest entirely out of his pictures.” “And out of his life, too, it seems,” said the other, “and both suffer in consequence. Don’t tell me; there is something wrong about a man who doesn’t care for women! Some day one will awaken him. But meantime I see a certain want of sympathy in the determined uprightness of these capital N’s that refuse to merge properly into the letters that come after, and obstinacy in the blunt endings of those g’s. And yet he must have great delicacy of touch--he seems to feel certain words as he writes them. Isn’t his painting very refined and delicate?” “It is all sorts, strong and delicate at once,” Egidia asseverated with enthusiasm. “And he is a great friend of yours!” Mrs. Elles remarked conclusively, folding up the letter and putting it in her pocket. She was now quite confirmed in her theory that the authoress had a secret passion for the painter. “Is he young?” “Fifty!” said Egidia, bluntly; she was beginning to guess the drift of her companion’s thoughts, and, though secretly amused at them, was minded to put her off a little, “and his hair is turning grey.” “But I adore grey hair,” Mrs. Elles exclaimed hastily and enthusiastically, as the door opened and a Miss Drummond was announced. “Oh dear!” ejaculated the hostess, almost in the new arrival’s hearing, but made amends for her discourtesy by a very effusive greeting. She introduced “Miss Giles--Egidia, you know;” with a flourish as one with whom she was on deeply intimate terms, casting at the same time a pathetic, imploring look in the latter’s direction, as much as to ask her not to discount her statement. Then more people came in. The room was filling. “Don’t go,” she whispered to Egidia, more as an appeal than a civility, and the good-natured authoress stayed and watched her, and studied her.