"Mr. Peters," said Mrs. Pallinder, delightedly. She withdrew a hand from her coquettishly fashionable little muff--we wore them very small in those days, a mere cuff of fur--and gave it to Gwynne, who was oddly nervous, with soothing self-possession. The readiness with which she set herself to the business of putting Steven at his ease was a grateful thing to see; she accepted his purple mitt, and shed on him a smile as winning as if he had been the most desirable acquaintance in the world. These courtesies, we have been assured, are, in reality, nothing but small evidences of a kind heart; yet I never thought Mrs. Pallinder a kind-hearted woman. Her elegant cordialities were not spontaneous; she spread the conversation with a thin glittering varnish of smiles, agreeable speeches, pretty conventionalities; one sometimes felt uneasily that her tact was almost aggressively brilliant, her good manners too flawless. But Gwynne, having in mind, maybe, this very incident, was quite enthusiastic about her to his intimates; Mrs. Pallinder was so kind, so considerate, a--a--a really sweet woman--sweet-tempered, he meant, of course, wasn't she? As for Steven, he proclaimed her without exception the most polished lady he had ever met. Doctor Vardaman--but one could not always be sure of what Doctor Vardaman thought. "Mrs. Pallinder was an uncommon sort of woman," he used to say with an unreadable expression. "I admired her very much--almost as much as I wondered at her. When we met at my gate she contrived to look at us three men, as if every one severally were _the_ man in the world in whom she was most interested. Are ladies taught these things from their cradles? I am told so; but I never saw one of them do it so well as Mrs. Pallinder. It's a tolerably stiff job to listen to poor Steven discourse on the circulating medium. _Experto credite!_ I've done it myself for hours at a stretch that I piously hope will count for me when I get to the Place of Punishment. But I'm sure I never could have done it with so perfect a grace as Mrs. Pallinder. We went up to the house, she walking the whole way with Steven, Gwynne and I following in the rear, humbly grateful and admiring. 'You're not a married man, Mr. Gwynne?' says Mrs. Pallinder, snatching at a change of topic in one of the pauses of Steven's eloquence. 'I've met so many charming Mrs. Gwynnes----' 'Madame, I am not,' said Steven. 'Do you know why the eagle is called the bird of freedom, Mrs. Pallinder?' Here," said the doctor, with a malicious grin, "I thought I detected a sort of crooked sequence in Steven's thoughts, but Mrs. Pallinder was as nearly gravelled as I ever saw her; and you must admit the subject was somewhat abruptly introduced. 'A--er--why, I must give it up, I am afraid,' she said. 'It's a riddle, isn't it? I'm not very good at riddles.' 'Because it never mates in captivity, ma'am,' says Steven profoundly. 'That's the way I am; the