“Lewis—I wonder if you realize…?”

            “Oh, fully.”

            “Then why do you go on? Isn’t it enough—aren’t you satisfied?”

            “With the effect they have produced?”

            “With the effect you have produced—on your family and on the whole of New York. With a slur on poor Papa’s memory.”

            “Papa left me the pictures, Sarah Anne.”

            “Yes. But not to make yourself a mountebank about them.”

            Lewis considered this impartially. “Are you sure? Perhaps, on the contrary, he did if for that very reason.”

            “Oh, don’t heap more insults on our father’s memory! Things are bad enough without that. How your wife can allow it I can’t see. Do you ever consider the humiliation to her?”

            Lewis gave another dry smile. “She’s used to being humiliated. The Kents accustomed her to that.”

            Sarah Anne reddened. “I don’t know why I should stay and be spoken to in this way. But I came with my husband’s approval.”

            “Do you need that to come and see your brother?”

            “I need it to—to make the offer I am about to make; and which he authorizes.”

            Lewis looked at her in surprise, and she purpled up to the lace ruffles inside her satin bonnet.

            “Have you come to make an offer for my collection?” he asked her humorously.

            “You seem to take pleasure in insinuating preposterous things. But anything is better than this public slight on our name.” Again she ran a shuddering glance over the pictures. “John and I,” she announced, “are prepared to double the allowance mother left you on condition that this…this ends…for good. That that horrible sign is taken down tonight.”

            Lewis seemed mildly to weigh the proposal. “Thank you very much, Sarah Anne,” he said at length. “I’m touched…touched and…and surprised…that you and John should have made this offer. But perhaps, before I decline it, you will accept mine: simply to show you my pictures. When once you’ve looked at them I think you’ll understand—”

            Mrs. Huzzard drew back hastily, her air of majesty collapsing. “Look at the pictures? Oh, thank you…but I can see them very well from here. And besides, I don’t pretend to be a judge…”

            “Then come up and see Treeshy and the baby,” said Lewis quietly.

            She stared at him, embarrassed. “Oh, thank you,” she stammered again; and as she prepared to follow him: “Then it’s no, really no, Lewis? Do consider, my dear! You say yourself that hardly any one comes. What harm can there be in closing the place?”

            “What—when tomorrow the man may come who understands?”

            Mrs. Huzzard tossed her plumes despairingly and followed him in silence.

            “What—Mary Adeline?” she exclaimed, pausing abruptly on the threshold of the nursery. Treeshy, as usual, sat holding her baby by the fire; and from a low seat opposite her rose a lady as richly furred and feathered as Mrs. Huzzard, but with far less assurance to carry off her furbelows. Mrs. Kent ran to Lewis and laid her plump cheek against his, while Treeshy greeted Sarah Anne.

            “I had no idea you were here, Mary Adeline,” Mrs. Huzzard murmured. It was clear that she had not imparted her philanthropic project to her sister, and was disturbed at the idea that Lewis might be about to do so. “I just dropped in for a minute,” she continued, “to see that darling little pet of an angel child—” and she enveloped the astonished baby in her ample rustlings and flutterings.

            “I’m very glad to see you here, Sarah Anne,” Mary Adeline answered with simplicity.

            “Ah, it’s not for want of wishing that I haven’t come before! Treeshy knows that, I hope. But the cares of a household like mine…”

            “Yes, and it’s been so difficult to get about in the bad weather,” Treeshy suggested sympathetically.

            Mrs. Huzzard lifted the Raycie eyebrows. “Has it really? With two pairs of horses one hardly notices the weather…Oh, the pretty, pretty, pretty, baby!…Mary Adeline,” Sarah Anne continued, turning severely to her sister, “I shall be happy to offer you a seat in my carriage if you’re thinking of leaving.”

            But Mary Adeline was a married woman too. She raised her mild head and her glance crossed her sister’s quietly. “My own carriage is at the door, thank you kindly, Sarah Anne,” she said; and the baffled Sarah Anne withdrew on Lewis’s arm. But a moment later the old habit of subordination reasserted itself.