The door opened and Clemency entered, but he did not notice it.  She came and sat down in front of him, and looked angrily at him, then for the first time he saw her.  He rose.  “I beg your pardon, I did not hear you come in,” he said.

“Sit down again,” said Clemency pettishly.  “Don’t be silly.  I am used to having young men not see anybody but my mother when she comes into a room, and it is quite right, too.  I don’t think there ever was a woman so beautiful as she, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” replied James.

Clemency eyed him keenly.  Then she blushed at the surmise which came to her, and James also blushed at the knowledge of the surmise.  “You can’t be much older than I am.  I am twenty-three,” said Clemency after a while.  Then the red suffused her very throat.

“I am twenty-three, too,” said James.  Then he added bluntly, for he began to be angry, “A man can think a woman the most beautiful he ever saw without—­”

“Oh, I didn’t think you were such a fool,” said Clemency; then she added, in a meek and shamed voice, “I should have been awfully disgusted with you if you had not thought my mother the most beautiful woman you ever saw, and I am used to men not seeing me.  I don’t want them to.  I think I feel something as Annie Lipton does about men.  She says she feels as if she wanted to kill every man who looks at her as if he loved her.  I think I should, too.”

“Miss Lipton has a great many admirers,” remarked James by way of changing the subject.

“Oh, yes, every young man for miles around, ever since she was grown up.  She doesn’t like any of them.”  Clemency looked at James with sudden concern.  “I am going to tell you something,” she said, “even if it is rather betraying confidence.  I think I ought to.  Annie told me she had taken a great dislike to you, from the very first moment she saw you, so it would be no use—­”

“I am sorry,” replied James stiffly, “but as I had no particular feeling for her, except admiration of her beauty, it makes no especial difference.”

“I thought, of course, you would fall in love with her,” said Clemency.  Then she added, with most inexplicable inverted jealousy, “You must have very poor taste, or you would.  You are the first one.”

“Some one has to be first,” James said, laughing.

“I don’t know but I was horrid to tell you what I did,” said Clemency, looking at him doubtfully.

“I don’t thing it as horrid for a girl to assume that every man is in love with her friend as it would be if she assumed something else,” said James.  He knew that his speech was ungallant; but it seemed to him that this girl fairly challenged him to rudeness.  But she looked at him innocently.

“Oh, no, I never should think that,” said she.  “Being with two women so very beautiful as my mother and Annie so much makes me quite sure that nobody is thinking of me.  It is only sometimes that I feel a little like a piece of furniture, only chairs can’t walk into rooms.”  She ended with a girlish laugh.  Then her face suddenly sobered.  “Doctor Elliot, I want you to tell me something,” said she.  “Uncle Tom wouldn’t if I asked him, and I don’t dare ask him anyway.  Do you think mother is very well?”