in city affairs, had emerged with a name shadowed by certain doubtful transactions.  But this was Milray’s history, which in the rapid progress of American events, was so far forgotten that you had first to remind people of what he had helped do before you could enjoy their surprise in realizing that this gentle person, with the cast of intellectual refinement which distinguished his face, was the notorious Milray, who was once in all the papers.  When he made his game and retired from politics, his family would have sacrificed itself a good deal to reclaim him socially, though they were of a severer social than spiritual conscience, in the decay of some ancestral ideals.  But he had rendered their willingness hopeless by marrying, rather late in life, a young girl from the farther West who had come East with a general purpose to get on.  She got on very well with Milray, and it was perhaps not altogether her own fault that she did not get on so well with his family, when she began to substitute a society aim for the artistic ambition that had brought her to New York.  They might have forgiven him for marrying her, but they could not forgive her for marrying him.  They were of New England origin and they were perhaps a little more critical with her than if they had been New Yorkers of Dutch strain.  They said that she was a little Western hoyden, but that the stage would have been a good place for her if she could have got over her Pike county accent; in the hush of family councils they confided to one another the belief that there were phases of the variety business in which her accent would have been no barrier to her success, since it could not have been heard in the dance, and might have been disguised in the song.

“Will you kindly read that passage over again?” Milray asked as Clementina paused at the end of a certain paragraph.  She read it, while he listened attentively.  “Could you tell me just what you understand by that?” he pursued, as if he really expected Clementina to instruct him.

She hesitated a moment before she answered, “I don’t believe I undastand anything at all.”

“Do you know,” said Milray, “that’s exactly my own case?  And I’ve an idea that the author is in the same box,” and Clementina perceived she might laugh, and laughed discreetly.

Milray seemed to feel the note of discreetness in her laugh, and he asked, smiling, “How old did you tell me you were?”

“I’m sixteen,” said Clementina.

“It’s a great age,” said Milray.  “I remember being sixteen myself; I have never been so old since.  But I was very old for my age, then.  Do you think you are?”

“I don’t believe I am,” said Clementina, laughing again, but still very discreetly.

“Then I should like to tell you that you have a very agreeable voice.  Do you sing?”

“No’m—­no, sir—­no,” said Clementina, “I can’t sing at all.”

“Ah, that’s very interesting,” said Milray, “but it’s not surprising.  I wish I could see your face distinctly; I’ve a great curiosity about matching voices and faces; I must get Mrs. Milray to tell me how you look.  Where did you pick up your pretty knack at reading?  In school, here?”