Mrs. Adister addressed her affectionately: "My dear Jane!" Patrick was introduced to Miss Mattock.

His first impression was that the young lady could wrestle with him and render it doubtful of his keeping his legs. He was next engaged in imagining that she would certainly burn and be a light in the dark. Afterward he discovered her feelings to be delicate, her looks pleasant. Thereupon came one of the most singular sensations he had ever known: he felt that he was unable to see the way to please her. She confirmed it by her remarks and manner of speaking. Apparently she was conducting a business.

"You're right, my dear Mrs. Adister. I'm on my way to the Laundry, and I called to get Captain Con to drive there with me and worry the manageress about the linen they turn out: for gentlemen are complaining of their shirt-fronts, and if we get a bad name with them it will ruin us. Women will listen to a man. I hear he has gone down to the city. I must go and do it alone. Our accounts are flourishing, I'm glad to say, though we cannot yet afford to pay for a secretary, and we want one. John and I verified them last night. We're aiming at steam, you know. In three or four years we may found a steam laundry on our accumulated capital. If only we can establish it on a scale to let us give employment to at least as many women as we have working now! That is what I want to hear of. But if we wait for a great rival steam laundry to start ahead of us, we shall be beaten and have to depend on the charitable sentiments of rich people to support the Institution. And that won't do. So it's a serious question with us to think of taking the initiative: for steam must come. It's a scandal every day that it doesn't while we have coal. I'm for grand measures. At the same time we must not be imprudent: turning off hands, even temporarily, that have to feed infants, would be quite against my policy."

Her age struck Patrick as being about twenty-three.

"Could my nephew Arthur be of any use to you?" said Mrs. Adister.

"Colonel Adister?" Miss Mattock shook her head. "No." "Arthur can be very energetic, when he takes up a thing." "Can he? But, Mrs. Adister, you are looking a little troubled. Sometimes you confide in me. You are so good to us with your subscriptions that I always feel in your debt."

Patrick glanced at his hostess for a signal to rise and depart.

She gave none, but at once unfolded her perplexity, and requested Miss Mattock to peruse the composition of Mr. Patrick O'Donnell and deliver an opinion upon it.

The young lady took the letter without noticing its author. She read it through, handed it back, and sat with her opinion evidently formed within.

“What do you think of it?" she was asked.

"Rank jesuitry,” she replied.

"I feared so!" sighed Mrs. Adister. “Yet it says everything I wish to have said. It spares my brother and it does not belie me. The effect of a letter is often most important. I cannot but consider this letter very ingenious. But the moment I hear it is jesuitical I forswear it. But then my dilemma remains. I cannot consent to give pain to my brother Edward: nor will I speak an untruth, though it be to save him from a wound. I am indeed troubled. Mr. Patrick, I cannot consent to despatch a jesuitical letter. You are sure of your impression, my dear Jane?"

“Perfectly,” said Miss Mattock.

Patrick leaned to her. "But if the idea in the mind of the person supposed to be writing the letter is accurately expressed? Does it matter, if we call it jesuitical, if the emotion at work behind it happens to be a trifle so, according to your definition?”

She rejoined: "I should say, distinctly it matters.”

"Then you'd not express the emotions at all?"

He flashed a comical look of astonishment as he spoke. She was not to be diverted; she settled into antagonism.

"If your writing in that way wounded the receiver.”

"Of course I should endeavor not to wound!"

"And there the bit of jesuitry begins. And it's innocent while it's no worse than an effort to do a disagreeable thing as delicately as you can."

She shrugged as delicately as she could:

"We cannot possibly please everybody in life."

"No: only we may spare them a shock: mayn't we?"

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Sophistries of any description, I detest.”

"But sometimes you smile to please, don't you?"

"Do you detect falseness in that?" she answered, after the demurest of pauses.

"No: but isn't there a soupçon of sophistry in it?”

"I should say that it comes under the title of common civility." "And on occasions a little extra civility is permitted!"

"Perhaps when we are not seeking a personal advantage." "On behalf of the Steam Laundry?"

Miss Mattock grew restless: she was too serious in defending her position to submit to laugh, and his good-humored face forbade her taking offense. "Well, perhaps, for that is in the interest of others."

"In the interests of poor and helpless females. And I agree with you with all my heart. But you would not be so considerate for the sore feelings of a father hearing what he hates to hear as to write a roundabout word to soften bad news to him?"

She sought refuge in the reply that nothing excused jesuitry. "Except the necessities of civilization," said Patrick. "Politeness is one thing," she remarked pointedly.

"And domestic politeness is quite as needful as popular, you'll admit. And what more have we done in the letter than to be guilty of that? And people declare it's rarer: as if we were to be shut up in families to tread on one another's corns! Dear me! and after a time we should be having rank jesuitry advertised as the specific balsam for an unhappy domesticated population treading with hard heels from desperate habit and not the slightest intention to wound."

"My dear Jane," Mrs. Adister interposed while the young lady sat between mildly staring and blinking, "you have, though still of a tender age, so excellent a head that I could trust to your counsel blindfolded. It is really deep concern for my brother. I am also strongly in sympathy with my niece, the princess, that beautiful Adiante: and my conscience declines to let me say that I am not."

"We might perhaps presume to beg for Miss Mattock's assistance in the composition of a second letter more to her taste," Patrick said slyly.

The effect was prompt: she sprang from her seat.

"Dear Mrs. Adister! I leave it to you. I am certain you and Mr. O'Donnell know best. It's too difficult and delicate for me. I am horribly blunt. Forgive me if I seemed to pretend to casuistry. I am sure I had no such meaning. I said what I thought. I always do. I never meant that it was not a very clever letter; and if it does exactly what you require it should be satisfactory. To-morrow evening John and I dine with you, and I look forward to plenty of controversy and amusement. At present I have only a head for work."

"I wish I had that," said Patrick devoutly.

She dropped her eyes on him, but without letting him perceive that he was a step nearer to the point of pleasing her.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DINNER-PARTY

MISS MATTOCK ventured on a prediction in her mind: She was sure the letter would go. And there was not much to signify if it did. But the curious fatality that a person of such a native uprightness as Mrs. Adister should have been drawn in among Irishmen, set her thoughts upon the composer of the letter, and upon the contrast of his ingenuous look with the powerful cast of his head. She fancied a certain danger about him; of what kind she could not quite distinguish, for it had no reference to woman's heart, and he was too young to be much of a politician, and he was not in the priesthood. His transparency was of a totally different order from Captain Con's, which proclaimed itself genuine by the inability to conceal a shoal of subterfuges. The younger cousin's features carried something invisible behind them, and she was just perceptive enough to spy it, and it excited her suspicions. Irishmen both she and her brother had to learn to like, owing to their bad repute for stability: they are, moreover, Papists: they are not given to ideas: that one of the working for the future has not struck them. In fine, they are not solid, not law-supporting, not disposed to be (humbly be it said) beneficent, like the good English. These were her views, and as she held it a

weakness to have to confess that Irishmen are socially more fascinating than the good English, she was on her guard against them.

Of course the letter had gone. She heard of it before the commencement of the dinner, after Mrs. Adister had introduced Captain Philip O'Donnell to her, and while she was exchanging a word or two with Colonel Adister, who stood ready to conduct her to the table. If he addressed any remarks to the lady under his charge, Miss Mattock did not hear him; and she listened-who shall say why? His unlike likeness to his brother had struck her. Patrick opposite was flowing in speech. But Captain Philip O'Donnell's taciturnity seemed no uncivil gloom: it wore nothing of that look of being beneath the table, which some of our good English are guilty of at their social festivities, or of towering aloof a Matterhorn above it, in the style of Colonel Adister. Her discourse with the latter amused her passing reflections. They started a subject, and he punctuated her observations, or she his, and so they speedily ran to earth.

"I think," says she, " you were in Egypt this time last winter." He supplies her with a comma: "Rather later.”

Then he carries on the line. "Dull enough, if you don't have the right sort of travelling crew in your boat."

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Naturally," she puts her semicolon, ominous of the full stop. "I fancy you have never been in Egypt?"

66 No."

There it is; for the tone betrays no curiosity about Egypt and her Nile, and he is led to suppose that she has a distaste for foreign places.

Condescending to attempt to please, which he has reason to wish to succeed in doing, the task of pursuing conversational intercourse devolves upon him:

"I missed Parlatti last spring. What opinion have you formed of her?"

"I know her only by name at present.'

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Ah, I fancy you are indifferent to Opera."

Not at all; I enjoy it. I was as busy then as I am now." "Meetings? Dorcas, so forth."

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Not Dorcas, I assure you. You might join if you would." "Your most obliged."