“Do you think,” returned Mrs. Carling, “that his visits are wholly on Julius’s account, and that he would come so often if there were no other inducement?  You know,” she continued, pressing her point timidly but persistently, “he always stays after we go upstairs if you are at home, and I have noticed that when you are out he always goes before our time for retiring.”

“I should say,” was the rejoinder, “that that was very much the proper thing.  Whether or not he comes here too often is not for me to say—­I have no opinion on the subject.  But, to do him justice, he is about the last man to wait for a tacit dismissal, or to cause you and Julius to depart from what he knows to be your regular habit out of politeness to him.  He is a person of too much delicacy and good breeding to stay when—­if—­that is to say—­” She turned again to the window without completing her sentence, and, though Mrs. Carling thought she could complete it for her, she wisely forbore.  After a moment of silence, Mary said in a voice devoid of any traces of confusion: 

“You asked me if I thought Mr. Lenox would come so often if there were no object in his coming except to see Julius.  I can only say that if Julius were out of the question I think he would come here but seldom; but,” she added, as she left the window and resumed her seat, “I do not quite see the object of this discussion, and, indeed, I am not quite sure of what we are discussing.  Do you object,” she asked, looking curiously at her sister and smiling slightly, “to Mr. Lenox’s coming here as he does, and if so, why?” This was apparently more direct than Mrs. Carling was quite prepared for.  “And if you do,” Mary proceeded, “what is to be done about it?  Am I to make him understand that it is not considered the proper thing? or will you? or shall we leave it to Julius?”

Mrs. Carling looked up into her sister’s face, in which was a smile of amused penetration, and looked down again in visible embarrassment.

The young woman laughed as she shook her finger at her.

“Oh, you transparent goose!” she cried.  “What did he say?”

“What did who say?” was the evasive response.

“Julius,” said Mary, putting her finger under her sister’s chin and raising her face.  “Tell me now.  You’ve been talking with him, and I insist upon knowing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  So there!”

“Well,” she admitted hesitatingly, “I said to him something like what I have to you, that it seemed to me that Mr. Lenox came very often, and that I did not believe it was all on his account, and that he” (won’t somebody please invent another pronoun?) “always stayed when you were at home—­”

“—­and,” broke in her sister, “that you were afraid my young affections were being engaged, and that, after all, we didn’t know much if anything about the young man, or, perhaps, that he was forming a hopeless attachment, and so on.”