“Oh, something more than that!” Nina drawled in her new manner.  But, being Nina, she could not resist the desire to display the new possession.  She jerked open a desk drawer, and Harriet saw thick letters, still in their envelopes, and tied in bundles.  “We write each other almost every day!” said Nina, yawning, as she flung herself down upon a couch, and reached for a book.

“I should fancy she would make a loyal friend,” Harriet observed, generously.  Nina softened a little, although her voice was still carefully bored and arrogant when she spoke: 

“Oh, she’s the best sort!”

It was one of Mrs. Tabor’s phrases, Harriet recognized.  She moved easily about the room, picking up other handsome, superbly illustrated volumes:  “An American Woman in the Sultan’s Harem,” “A Favourite of Kings.”

“Does she have my room when she is here?” Harriet presently suggested, sympathetically.  “Now, my dear,” she added, as Nina’s quick self-conscious and hostile look gave consent, “Mrs. Tabor is too thoroughly acquainted with convention to blame you if your father keeps you under a governess’s eye for a little while longer.  You’re the most precious thing your father has, Nina, and as I used to remind you years ago, you don’t begin to have the restrictions that the European princesses have to bear!”

This view of the case was always pleasing to Nina’s vanity; she was quite clever enough to see that a friend protected and confined, watched and valued, would lose no prestige with the charming “Ladybird.”  She pouted; and Harriet saw that for the moment the battle was hers.

“Darling gown!” said Harriet of the picture.

“Oh, she has the most wonderful clothes!” It was the old Nina’s voice.  “She doesn’t spend much, but she goes to the best places, and they know her there, and the women at Hatson’s will say, ’I’ve got a gown for you, Mrs. Tabor!’ She picked out this negligee, and she picked out another gown for me that you haven’t seen.  That was one thing that made trouble between her and her husband,” Nina said, eagerly.  “She can’t help looking smart, and he used to get so jealous, and she told me that she told the judge exactly what she spent for clothes the last year, and he said that that was less than his wife spent, mind you, and he said he didn’t know how she did it!  And that was the judge, that had never laid eyes on her before!  She used to cry and cry, after she got her divorce, because she said that she thought there was a sort of disgrace about it.  But this judge in Nevada said that a man like Jack Tabor ought to be horsewhipped!”

“Has she—­been here very much?” Harriet said, after a moment.

“Oh, lots!  She loves to be here, and I can’t think why,” Nina said, “because people are all crazy to get her, and she could go to the most wonderful dinners and things.  But she really is just like a girl, herself; sometimes we burst right out laughing, because we think exactly the same about things!  And she just loves picnics, and to let her hair down—­and she’s so funny!  You’ll just love her when you know her—­”