“Don’t say a word about it, dear,” her sister interrupted, “unless you would rather than not.”

“I wish to,” said Mary.  “Of course I am not oblivious of the fact that Mr. Lenox comes here very often, nor that he seems to like to stay and talk with me, because, don’t you know, if he didn’t he could go when you do, and I don’t mind admitting that, as a general thing, I like to have him stay; but, as I said to you, if it weren’t for Julius he would not come here very often.”

“Don’t you think,” said Mrs. Carling, now on an assured footing, “that if it were not for you he would not come so often?”

Perhaps Mary overestimated the attraction which her brother-in-law had for Mr. Lenox, and she smiled slightly as she thought that it was quite possible.  “I suppose,” she went on, with a little shrug of the shoulders, “that the proceeding is not strictly conventional, and that the absolutely correct thing would be for him to say good night when you and Julius do, and that there are those who would regard my permitting a young man in no way related to me to see me very often in the evening without the protection of a duenna as a very unbecoming thing.”

“I never have had such a thought about it,” declared Mrs. Carling.

“I never for a moment supposed you had, dear,” said Mary, “nor have I. We are rather unconventional people, making very few claims upon society, and upon whom ‘society’ makes very few.”

“I am rather sorry for that on your account,” said her sister.

“You needn’t be,” was the rejoinder.  “I have no yearnings in that direction which are not satisfied with what I have.”  She sat for a minute or two with her hands clasped upon her knee, gazing reflectively into the fire, which, in the growing darkness of the winter afternoon, afforded almost the only light in the room.  Presently she became conscious that her sister was regarding her with an air of expectation, and resumed:  “Leaving the question of the conventions out of the discussion as settled,” she said, “there is nothing, Alice, that you need have any concern about, either on Mr. Lenox’s account or mine.”

“You like him, don’t you?” asked Mrs. Carling.

“Yes,” said Mary frankly, “I like him very much.  We have enough in common to be rather sympathetic, and we differ enough not to be dull, and so we get on very well.  I never had a brother,” she continued, after a momentary pause, “but I feel toward him as I fancy I should feel toward a brother of about my own age, though he is five or six years older than I am.”

“You don’t think, then,” said Mrs. Carling timidly, “that you are getting to care for him at all?”

“In the sense that you use the word,” was the reply, “not the least in the world.  If there were to come a time when I really believed I should never see him again, I should be sorry; but if at any time it were a question of six months or a year, I do not think my equanimity would be particularly disturbed.”