The Mettle of the Pasture

remely unpleasant to her; she did not feel in a mood to entertain callers this morning. Rising with regret, she looked out. The broug

hat she did not understand; but they rendered it clear at least that his love affair had been interrupted, if not been ended. She could not b

tor was to be received (not in the parlors; they were too full of solemn me

it could have been valued as upon a quantitative scale. It did not involve any of those incalc

h all but preternatural insight into what is fine in human nature, but had slight power of discovering what is base; she seemed endowed with far-sightedness in high, clear, luminous atmospheres, but was short-sighted in moral twilights. She was, therefore, no judge of the character of her intimate. As for that lady's reputation, this was well k

hat must be captured and brought down from the heights, she was usually to be explained by mining

ight a stalk in its marshes. An insect turns itself into one of the dried twigs of a dead stick. On the margin of a shadowed pool the frog is hued like moss-greenness beside greenness. Mrs. Conyers availed herself of a kind of protective assimilation when she exposed herself to the environment of Mrs. Meredith, adopting devices by which she would be taken for any object in nature but herself. Two familiar devices were applied to her habiliments and her conver

orld's vanities, an urban spirit that hungered for country righteousness. During a walk one day through the gardens she paused under the boughs of a weeping willow a

her self-concealment did not conceal one thing-her walk. This one element of her conduct had its curious psychology. She had never been able to forget that certain scandals set going many years before, had altered the course of Mrs. Meredith's life and of the lives of some others. After a lapse of so long a time

een loose paper on the ground or moulted feathers on the bricks, she would have discovered this with the victorious satisfaction of finding fault. But orderliness prevailed. No; the mat at the

old estate. This was the home she had designed for Isabel: the land, the house,

ved. Her nature called for peace; but if Rowan had been wronged, then there was no peace-and a sacred war is a cruel one. The instant that the two ladies confronted e

ted that she c

e called for the dism

e cream, and more cream calls for more calves, and more calves call for-well, we have all heard them! I do not understand how a man who looks like Ambrose can so stimulate cattle. Of course my cows are not as fine and fat as Rowan's-that

an. When Mrs. Meredith returned, for the same reason she asked to be taken into the garden, which was in its splendor of bloom. Mrs. Meredith culled for her a few of the most resplendent blossoms-she could not have offered to any one a

he enlarged upon this, praising Dent to the disparagement of her own grandson Victor, now in retreat from college on account of an injury

test of a companion. So a weak solution may not reveal a poison when a strong one will. Mrs. Meredith felt this morning as never before the real nature of the woman over whom

n in the front of the brougham opposite her face. It sprang aside, revealing a little toilette mirror. On the cushion beside her lay something under a spread newspaper. She quickly drew off her sombre visiting gloves; and lifting the newspaper, revealed under it a fresh pair of gloves, pearl-colored. She wo

on of her years. The hands were moved backward on the horologe of mortality as we move backward the pointers

time enough left