"I know what you mean," Helen said thoughtfully; "and in one way, at least, I'm afraid you're right. But don't you think that most of the difference is on the surface, and the young people of to-day are not really so irreverent as they appear to be? The fashion now is toward plain, blunt unaffectedness; reverence is a polish of manners which implies insincerity, and the young men who are really reverent are most of them ashamed of it and work all the harder to conceal it." "They are not obliged to overexert themselves," replied Mr. Lispenard. "But perhaps you are right, my dear. I admit that I am out of sympathy with the younger generation. They might possess a thousand virtues, and I could see none of them." "I'm of the younger generation," said his visitor, with humorous apologeticalness. "I hope you won't be too hard on it." "One of its few virtues--that it numbers you among its members," her host gallantly rejoined. "But they are not all like you--or there would be fewer bachelors in your town of Boston." Helen laughed outright. "No bachelor yet have I unmade," she replied, somewhat enigmatically. "Indeed?" said Mr. Lispenard. "I may not think very highly of the young men of to-day, but my opinion of them is not so low as that. Come, now--I am an old gentleman and the model of reticence--I will never tell. I'll wager you a box of roses against anything you like that you had a proposal no later than last week. Perhaps you even came to New York to escape him." Considering that Pelgram's studio tea was barely a week in the past, Helen's face betrayed her confusion. "_Touche_!" said her host, with a laugh. "Really, I may have to revise in part my idea of modern young men. After all, they're not blind." Helen found that time passed quickly during her first few days in New York. Miss Wardrop was a self-sufficient personage, with a decided opinion upon everything in heaven and on earth, and a preference no less decided for that opinion over those held by others. She had, however, a great fondness for her niece, whom she honored, as she expressed it, by making not one iota of change in her menage or habits on account of the presence of her visitor. "It would be a poor arrangement for both of us if I were to put myself out for you," she had once explained to the girl. "I would be certain to regret having done so; and if I did, so would you. So I will pay you the compliment of going on precisely as though you weren't here." So she continued to breakfast in bed at the conservative hour of ten o'clock; continued to superintend the rehabilitation of two rooms on the second floor which Jenks, to his rheumatic distress, was redecorating in accordance with the latest whim of his mistress; continued in all things to order her life exactly as she had ordered it for twenty years.