And this, a few days later, she actually did, to the carefully concealed elation of Mr. Lispenard's elderly housekeeper, who, after ushering Miss Maitland into the high-ceiled parlor, betook herself to the region below stairs, where she definitely expressed herself to the cook. "Sure it's a divil the masther is wid the ladies till this very day--and him only about four minutes inside of eighty!" "A lady calling, is it?" inquired the cook, with interest. "Sure--a young wan. It's the ould bhoys have the way wid them, after all's said and done." Meanwhile in the old-fashioned reception room with its tinkly crystal chandelier aquiver, as it were, in sympathetic excitement, the old gentleman was greeting his young guest. "Old age!" he said, with a smile of half-mock ruefulness. "Old age! When ladies come to call on us, we understand, we old beaux, that it is because we are no longer considered dangerous. Yet the bitterness of that knowledge, were it twice as bitter as it is, would be more than offset by my honor and pleasure in receiving you." Helen beamed on him for reply, and his swift, penetrating eyes observed her. "You have grown up to be beautiful, my child," observed old Mr. Lispenard. "There is nothing about you of this new generation, which I hate. Indeed, if you would wear crinolines and a curl of that dark hair on your shoulder, you would be quite perfect." His young caller blushed a little, but she laughingly retorted:-- "Did you say you had ceased to be dangerous? No one of my generation could have said that. You will turn my head, sir--and isn't that being dangerous? For the heads of my generation, the new generation, as you call it, are not easy to turn." "No. True enough," said Mr. Lispenard, nodding with cynical approval. "Their heads are on so tight there is no turning them; no flexibility about the young people to-day. The maids are sad enough, but the young men are worse. Gallants is what we used to call young men, but they make none to-day that could answer to that term. Gallants! There is no more courtesy in the land than among the fishes below sea!" Helen felt inclined to defend her contemporaries, but as she looked at the old aristocrat before her and contrasted his manner with that of some of the men in her own set, she did not know quite what to say. Pelgram's poses seemed cheap and shallow, and Charlie Wilkinson's free-and-easy carriage might have its virtues, but it certainly was not marked by dignity, nor did it make particularly for respect. "They have no reverence for age, none for the great things, the great days that some of us remember. I confess that I do not like them. I am quite an old man, and for some years past I have met scarcely a young man whom my mother would have permitted in her drawing room."