‘It’s very noble of you!’ murmured Dora Leach.

‘I never heard anything so noble!’ said her sister.

Alma flushed with pleasure.

‘And yet you know,’ Dora pursued, ‘artists have a duty to the world.’

‘I can’t help questioning,’ said Gerda, ’whether you had a right to sacrifice yourself.’

Alma smiled thoughtfully.

‘You can’t quite see it as I do.  When one has children ——­’

‘It must make a great difference’ —­ ‘Oh, a great difference!’ —­ responded the sisters.  And again they exclaimed at the spectacle of such noble devotedness.

By natural transition the talk turned to Mrs. Carnaby.  The girls spoke of her compassionately, but Alma soon perceived that they did not utter all their thoughts.

‘I’m afraid,’ she said, ’that some people take another view.  I have heard —­ but one doesn’t care to repeat such things.’

Dora and Gerda betrayed a lively interest.  Yes, they too had heard disagreeable gossip; what a shame it was!

‘Of course, you see her?’ said Dora.

Alma shook her head, and seemed a trifle embarrassed.

‘I don’t even know whether she still lives there.’

‘Oh yes, she does,’ replied Miss Leach eagerly.  ’But I’ve been told that very few people go.  I wondered —­ we rather wished to know whether you did.’

Again Alma gently shook her head.

’I haven’t even heard from her.  I suppose she has her reasons.  To tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure that my husband would like me to call.  It isn’t a pleasant subject, is it?  Let us talk of something else.’

So, when Dora and Gerda went away, they carried with them the conviction that Mrs. Carnaby was an ‘impossible’ person and of course lost no opportunity of imparting it to their friends.

About a week before Christmas, when the new servants seemed to have settled to their work, and the house routine needed less supervision, Alma and her husband dined at the Langlands’, to meet a few quiet people.  Among the guests was Mrs. Langland’s brother, of whom Alma had already heard, and whom, before the end of the evening, she came to regard with singular interest.  Mr. Thistlewood had no advantages of physique, and little charm of manner; his long, meagre body never seemed able to put itself at ease; sitting or standing, he displayed the awkwardness of a naturally shy man who has not studied the habits of society.  But his features, in spite of irregularity, and a complexion resembling the tone of ‘foxed’ paper, attracted observation, and rewarded it; his eye had a pleasant twinkle, oddly in contrast with the lines of painful thought upon his forehead, and the severity of strained muscles in the lower part of his face.  He was head-master of a small school of art in a northern county; a post which he had held only for a twelvemonth.  Like his sister’s husband, Thistlewood suffered from disappointed ambition, for he had aimed at great things as a painter; but he accepted his defeat, and at thirty-five was seeking content in a ‘sphere of usefulness’ which promised, after all, to give scope to his best faculties.  Not long ago he would have scorned the thought of becoming a ‘teacher’; yet for a teacher he was born, and the truth, in dawning upon his mind, had brought with it a measure of consolation.