“Won’t you tell us about them?” the girl asked, feeling that the word “handsome” contained a covert allusion to her own lack of beauty of which she was extremely sensitive. “Not now, and I don’t think it would interest you much, anyway. Is your mother indoors?” The girl nodded and he turned away and disappeared round the corner of the house. She and Latimer sauntered on. “The handsome and interesting person doesn’t seem to have made your paternal any fuller than usual of the milk of human kindness,” said the young man, whose suit had progressed further than people guessed. “Popper’s often like that,” said Maud slowly,--and in a prettier and more attractive girl the tone and manner of the remark would have been charmingly plaintive,--“I don’t know what makes him so.” “He can be more like a patent congealing ice-box when he wants to be than anybody I ever saw. But I don’t see why he should be so to you.” “I don’t, either, but he is often. He never says anything exactly disagreeable, but he makes me feel sort of--of--mean. Sometimes I think he doesn’t like me at all.” “Oh, bosh!” said Latimer gallantly; “if that’s the case he’s ripe for a commission of lunacy.” Shackleton meantime had entered the house and ascended to his dressing-room. He was in there making the small change which marked his dinner from his business toilet when his wife entered. The years had turned Bessie into a buxom, fine-looking matron, fashionably dressed, but inclined to be very stout. Her eye and its glance were sharp and keen-edged, still alight with vigor and alertness. It was easy to see why Jake Shackleton, the reader of character, had set aside his feeble first wife for this dominating and forceful partner. He had been faithful to her; after a fashion had loved her, and certainly admired her, for she had the characteristics he most respected. In his success she had been the same assistance that she had been in his poverty. She had climbed the social heights and conquered the impregnable position they now occupied. Her rich dress, her handsome appearance, her agreeably modulated voice, all were in keeping with the position and great wealth that were theirs. The house of which she was the mistress was admirably ordered and sumptuously furnished. She had only disappointed him in one way--her children. “What made you late?” she, too, asked; “several people came down this afternoon.” “I was detained--a girl Mrs. Willers wanted me to see; who’s here?” “Latimer, and Count de Lamolle, and George Herron and the Thurston girls; and the Delanceys are coming over to dinner.”