It was hard, however, for the closest observer to find out what the motive could be. Evelyn had no small effort to make to overcome her own natural objections to the society of the two young people, one of whom studied her like a pattern book, while the other eyed her from his corner with a hostility scantily veiled by that attempt to be “ceevil” which his aunt had enjoined upon him. Archie’s attitude, however, was on the whole less trying than that of Marion, who studied and copied Mrs. Rowland’s manners, her tone, as far as she could master it, her little tricks of gesture, till Evelyn became ridiculous to herself; which is a very curious experience. When she saw little Marion with her slight person throw back her head as Evelyn was aware she had herself the habit of doing, and drop her hand by her side, which was another peculiarity, swaying it slightly as she walked, a trick for which Evelyn had suffered much in her youth, the laugh which burst from her in spite of herself was not pleasant. Evelyn was tall, while Marion was little; she was forty, and Marion was eighteen. She belonged a little, she was aware, to a bye-gone school, which had been stately rather than piquant, and Marion’s infantile prettiness was adapted to a quite different principle. It was ludicrous to watch growing and increasing day by day the travesty of herself which was before her eyes in her husband’s little girl. Sometimes her impatience with the copy was so great that the woman’s instincts of outraged personality were upon her, and she could have seized and shaken the folly out of the little flatterer and imitator. But I need not say that this was the merest flutter of nerves on Evelyn’s part, and that she never really departed from her _rôle_ of patience. The worst of it was that James began gradually to perceive, and not only to perceive, but regard with delight, this imitation process. “I really think she is growing a little like you, Evelyn!” he said, when his wife had been driven nearly to an end of her toleration, and it was all she could do to keep from her countenance a contraction--which Marion would probably have reproduced next day, to the confusion of all concerned.