"I suppose she was sick when they went," commented Mrs. Downing. "I heard so. It was a queer thing for them to go to Europe, as inexperienced as they were and everything. But the father and mother were more inexperienced still, I guess. They were perfectly foolish about the girl--and so was the brother. She went to some studio in Boston to study art, and they had an idea her bits of pictures were wonderful."

"I never saw her myself," said Mrs. Stornaway. "No one seems to have seen anything of her but Miss Amory Starkweather."

"Miss Starkweather!" exclaimed Baird. "Oh, yes--in her letters she mentioned having met her."

"Well, it was a queer thing," said Mrs. Downing, "but it was like Miss Amory. They say the girl fainted in the street as Miss Amory was driving by, and she stopped her carriage and took her in and carried her home.

She took quite a fancy to her and saw her every day or so until she went away."

It was not unnatural that at this juncture John Baird's eyes should wander across the room to where Miss Amory Starkweather sat, but it was a coincidence that as his eye fell upon her she should meet it with a gesture which called him to her side.

"It seems that Miss Amory wishes to speak to me," he said to his companions.

"He'll make himself just as interesting to her as he has made himself to us," said Mrs. Stornaway, with heavy sprightliness, as he left them. "He never spares himself trouble."

He went across the room to Miss Amory.

"Can you sit down by me?" she said. "I want to talk to you about Lucien Latimer."

"What is there in the atmosphere which suggests Latimer?" he inquired.

"We have been talking about him at the other side of the room. Do you know him?"

"I never saw him," she replied, "but I knew her."

"Her!" he repeated.

"The little sister." She leaned forward a little. "What were the details of her death?" she asked. "I want to know--I want to know."

Somehow the words sounded nervously eager.

"I did not ask him," he answered; "I thought he preferred to be silent.

He is a silent man."

She sat upright again, and for a moment seemed to forget herself. She said something two or three times softly to herself. Baird thought it was "Poor child! Poor child!"

"She was young to die," he said, in a low voice. "Poor child, indeed."

Miss Amory came back to him, as it were.

"The younger, the better," she said. "Look at me!" Her burning eyes were troubling and suggestive. Baird found himself trying to gather himself together. He assumed the natural air of kindly remonstrance.

"Oh, come," he said. "Don't take that tone. It is unfair to all of us."

Her reply was certainly rather a startling one.

"Very well then," she responded. "Look at yourself. If you had died as young as she did----"

He looked at her, conscious of a little coldness creeping over his body.

She was usually lighter when they were not entirely alone. Just now, in the midst of this commonplace, exceedingly middle-class evening party, with the Larkins, the Downings, and the Burtons chattering, warm, diffuse, and elate, about him, she stirred him with a little horror--not horror of herself, but of something in her mood.

"Do you think I am such a bad fellow?" he said.

"No," she answered. "Worse, poor thing. It is not the bad fellows who produce the crudest results. But I did not call you here to tell you that you were bad or good. I called you to speak about Lucien Latimer. When you go to him--you are going to him?"

"To-morrow."

"Then tell him to come and see me."

"I will tell him anything you wish," said Baird. "Is there anything else?"

"Tell him I knew her," she answered, "Margery--Margery!"

"Margery," Baird said slowly, as if the sound touched him. "What a pretty, simple name!"

"She was a pretty, simple creature," said Miss Amory.

"Tell me--" he said, "tell me something more about her."

"There is nothing more to tell," she replied. "She was dying when I met her. I saw it--in her eyes. She could not have lived. She went away and died. She--I----"

John Baird heard a slight sharp choking sound in her throat.

"There!" she said presently, "I don't like to talk about it. I am too emotional for my years. Go to Mrs. Stornaway. She is looking for you."

He got up and turned and left her without speaking, and a few minutes later, when Mrs. Stornaway wanted him to give an account of his interview with the Pope, she was surprised to see him approaching her from the door as if he had been out of the room.

His story of the interview with the Pope was very interesting, and he was more "brilliant" than ever during the remainder of the evening, but when the last guest had departed, followed by Mrs. Stornaway to the threshold, that lady, on her return to the parlour, found him standing by the mantel looking at the fire with so profoundly wearied an air, that she uttered an exclamation.

"Why," she said, "you look tired, I must say. But everything went off splendidly and I never saw you so brilliant."

"Thank you," he answered.

"I've just been saying," with renewed spirit of admiration, "that your crossing with that Latimer has quite brought him into notice. It will be a good thing for him. I heard several people speak of him to-night and say how kind it was of you to take him up."

Baird stirred uneasily.

"I should not like to have that tone taken," he said. "Why should I patronise him? We shall be friends--if he will allow it." He spoke with so much heat and impatience that Mrs. Stornaway listened with a discomfited stare.

"But nobody knows anything about them," she said. "They're quite ordinary people. They live in Bank Street."

"That may settle the matter for Willowfield," said Baird, "but it does not settle it for me. We are to be friends, and Willowfield must understand that."

And such was the decision of his tone that Mrs. Stornaway did not recover herself and was still staring after him in a bewildered fashion when he went upstairs.

"But it's just like him," she remarked, rather weakly to the room's emptiness. "That's always the way with people of genius and--and--_mind_.

They're always humble."