“Don’t despair,” she rejoined; “one star differeth from another star in glory, but that is no reason why they should not be on visiting terms.” “My dear, you may laugh--you may laugh, but I am sixty-five, and I am not laughing at the idea of what company I may be obliged to keep presently. In any case I’m sure I shall not be comfortable. If I’m where she is, I shall be dull; if I’m where her husband is, I’ll have no reputation; and if there is one thing I want, it is a spotless reputation--sometime.” Hylda laughed--the manner and the voice were so droll--but her face saddened too, and her big eyes with the drooping lashes looked up pensively at the portrait of her husband’s mother. “Was it ever a happy family, or a lucky family?” she asked. “It’s lucky now, and it ought to be happy now,” was the meaning reply. Hylda made no answer, but caught the strings of the ‘cello lightly, and shook her head reprovingly, with a smile meant to be playful. For a moment she played, humming to herself, and then the Duchess touched the hand that was drawing the bow softly across the strings. She had behind her garishness a gift for sympathy and a keen intuition, delicacy, and allusiveness. She knew what to say and what to leave unsaid, when her heart was moved. “My darling,” she said now, “you are not quite happy; but that is because you don’t allow yourself to get well. You’ve never recovered from your attack last summer; and you won’t, until you come out into the world again and see people. This autumn you ought to have been at Homburg or at Aix, where you’d take a little cure of waters and a great deal of cure of people. You were born to bask in friendship and the sun, and to draw from the world as much as you deserve, a little from many, for all you give in return. Because, dearest, you are a very agreeable person, with enough wit and humanity to make it worth the world’s while to conspire to make you do what will give it most pleasure, and let yourself get most--and that’s why I’ve come.” “What a person of importance I am!” answered Hylda, with a laugh that was far from mirthful, though she caught the plump, wrinkled little hand of the Duchess and pressed it. “But really I’m getting well here fast. I’m very strong again. It is so restful, and one’s days go by so quietly.” “Yet, I’m not sure that it’s rest you want. I don’t think it is. You want tonics--men and women and things. Monte Carlo would do you a world of good--I’d go with you. Eglington gambles here”--she watched Hylda closely--“why shouldn’t you gamble there?” “Eglington gambles?” Hylda’s face took on a frightened look, then it cleared again, and she smiled. “Oh, of course, with international affairs, you mean. Well, I must stay here and be the croupier.” “Nonsense! Eglington is his own croupier. Besides, he is so much in London, and you so much here. You sit with the distaff; he throws the dice.”