and vanity; as, for instance, the arts of music and dress.  But, resist as one may, a man can not fight against his susceptibilities.  And those who can feel the effect of any art are very many more than those who can practice it or criticise it.  It does not matter that my Bohemian friend’s musical abilities are slender.  No man in the great Boston Jubilee got more out of Johann Strauss, in his “Kunstleben,” that inimitable expression of inspired vagabondage, than he did.  And so, though Albert Charlton could not have told you what colors would “go together,” as the ladies say, he could, none the less, always feel the discord of his mother’s dress, as now he felt the beauty of the room and appreciated the genius of Isa, that had made so much out of resources so slender.  For there were only a few touch-me-nots in the two vases on the mantel-piece; there were wild-flowers and prairie-grasses over the picture-frames; there were asparagus-stalks in the fireplace; there was—­well, there was a tout-ensemble of coolness and delightfulness, of freshness and repose.  There was the graceful figure of Isabel by the window, with the yet dewy grass and the distant rolling, boundless meadow for a background.  And there was in Isabel’s brown calico dress a faultlessness of fit, and a suitableness of color—­a perfect harmony, like that of music.  There was real art, pure and refined, in her dress, as in the arrangement of the room.  Albert was angry with it, while he felt its effect; it was as though she had set herself there to be admired.  But nothing was further from her thought.  The artist works not for the eyes of others, but for his own, and Isabel Marlay would have taken not one whit less of pains if she could have been assured that no eye in the universe would look in upon that frontier-village parlor.

I said that Charlton was vexed.  He was vexed because he felt a weakness in himself that admired such “gewgaws,” as he called everything relating to dress or artistic housekeeping.  He rejoiced mentally in the superiority of Helen Minorkey, who gave her talents to higher themes.  And yet he felt a sense of restfulness in this cool room, where every color was tuned to harmony with every other.  He was struck, too, with the gracefulness of Isa’s figure.  Her face was not handsome, but the good genius that gave her the feeling of an artist must have molded her own form, and every lithe motion was full of poetry.  You have seen some people who made upon you the impression that they were beautiful, and yet the beauty was all in a statuesque figure and a graceful carriage.  For it makes every difference how a face is carried.

The conversation between Charlton and Miss Marlay had not gone far in the matter of Katy and Smith Westcott until Albert found that her instincts had set more against the man than even his convictions.  A woman like Isabel Marlay is never so fine as in her indignation, and there never was any indignation finer than Isa Marlay’s when she spoke of the sacrifice of such a girl as Katy to such a man as Westcott.  In his admiration of her thorough-going earnestness, Albert forgave her devotion to domestic pursuits and the arts of dress and ornamentation.  He found sailing with her earnestness much pleasanter than he had found rowing against it on the occasion of his battle about the clergy.