“Very,” said Mrs. Horn, with a color of censure in her assent.  “The younger girl seemed more amiable than her sister.  But what manners!”

“Dreadful!” said Margaret, with knit brows, and a pursed mouth of humorous suffering.  “But she appeared to feel very much at home.”

“Oh, as to that, neither of them was much abashed.  Do you suppose Mr. Beaton gave the other one some hints for that quaint dress of hers?  I don’t imagine that black and lace is her own invention.  She seems to have some sort of strange fascination for him.”

“She’s very picturesque,” Margaret explained.  “And artists see points in people that the rest of us don’t.”

“Could it be her money?” Mrs. Horn insinuated.  “He must be very poor.”

“But he isn’t base,” retorted the girl, with a generous indignation that made her aunt smile.

“Oh no; but if he fancies her so picturesque, it doesn’t follow that he would object to her being rich.”

“It would with a man like Mr. Beaton!”

“You are an idealist, Margaret.  I suppose your Mr. March has some disinterested motive in paying court to Miss Mela—­Pamela, I suppose, is her name.  He talked to her longer than her literature would have lasted.”

“He seems a very kind person,” said Margaret.

“And Mr. Dryfoos pays his salary?”

“I don’t know anything about that.  But that wouldn’t make any difference with him.”

Mrs. Horn laughed out at this security; but she was not displeased by the nobleness which it came from.  She liked Margaret to be high-minded, and was really not distressed by any good that was in her.

The Marches walked home, both because it was not far, and because they must spare in carriage hire at any rate.  As soon as they were out of the house, she applied a point of conscience to him.

“I don’t see how you could talk to that girl so long, Basil, and make her laugh so.”

“Why, there seemed no one else to do it, till I thought of Kendricks.”

“Yes, but I kept thinking, Now he’s pleasant to her because he thinks it’s to his interest.  If she had no relation to ‘Every Other Week,’ he wouldn’t waste his time on her.”

“Isabel,” March complained, “I wish you wouldn’t think of me in he, him, and his; I never personalize you in my thoughts:  you remain always a vague unindividualized essence, not quite without form and void, but nounless and pronounless.  I call that a much more beautiful mental attitude toward the object of one’s affections.  But if you must he and him and his me in your thoughts, I wish you’d have more kindly thoughts of me.”

“Do you deny that it’s true, Basil?”

“Do you believe that it’s true, Isabel?”

“No matter.  But could you excuse it if it were?”

“Ah, I see you’d have been capable of it in my, place, and you’re ashamed.”

“Yes,” sighed the wife, “I’m afraid that I should.  But tell me that you wouldn’t, Basil!”