“You are doing too much, Eleanor,” she said.

Mrs. Hanbury was likewise a direct person.

“I will, take it back on one condition, Mary.  If you will tell me that Tom has finished paying Randolph’s debts.”

Mrs. Leffingwell was silent.

“I thought not,” said Mrs. Hanbury.  “Now Randolph was my own cousin, and I insist.”

Aunt Mary turned over the envelope, and there followed a few moments’ silence, broken only by the distant clamour of tin horns and other musical instruments of the season.

“I sometimes think, Mary, that Honora is a little like Randolph, and-Mrs. Randolph.  Of course, I did not know her.”

“Neither did I,” said Aunt Mary.

“Mary,” said Mrs. Hanbury, again, “I realize how you worked to make the child that velvet coat.  Do you think you ought to dress her that way?”

“I don’t see why she shouldn’t be as well dressed as the children of my friends, Eleanor.”

Mrs. Hanbury laid her hand impulsively on Aunt Mary’s.

“No child I know of dresses half as well,” said Mrs. Hanbury.  “The trouble you take—­”

“Is rewarded,” said Aunt Mary.

“Yes,” Mrs. Hanbury agreed.  “If my own daughters were half as good looking, I should be content.  And Honora has an air of race.  Oh, Mary, can’t you see?  I am only thinking of the child’s future.”

“Do you expect me to take down all my mirrors, Eleanor?  If she has good looks,” said Aunt Mary, “she has not learned it from my lips.”

It was true:  Even Aunt Mary’s enemies, and she had some, could not accuse her of the weakness of flattery.  So Mrs. Hanbury smiled, and dropped the subject.

CHAPTER IV

OF TEMPERAMENT

We have the word of Mr. Cyrus Meeker that Honora did not have to learn to dance.  The art came to her naturally.  Of Mr. Cyrus Meeker, whose mustaches, at the age of five and sixty, are waxed as tight as ever, and whose little legs to-day are as nimble as of yore.  He has a memory like Mr. Gladstone’s, and can give you a social history of the city that is well worth your time and attention.  He will tell you how, for instance, he was kicked by the august feet of Mr. George Hanbury on the occasion of his first lesson to that distinguished young gentleman; and how, although Mr. Meeker’s shins were sore, he pleaded nobly for Mr. George, who was sent home in the carriage by himself,—­a punishment, by the way, which Mr. George desired above all things.

This celebrated incident occurred in the new ballroom at the top of the new house of young Mrs. Hayden, where the meetings of the dancing class were held weekly.  Today the soot, like the ashes of Vesuvius, spouting from ten thousand soft-coal craters, has buried that house and the whole district fathoms deep in social obscurity.  And beautiful Mrs. Hayden what has become of her?  And Lucy Hayden, that doll-like darling of the gods?