pretty girl, of a sweet, childish type, in spite of her finished manners and her very sophisticated clothes.  Sylvia at first saw nothing except the clothes, and realized nothing except the finished manner.  She immediately called to the front her own manners, which were as finished as the girl’s, albeit of a provincial type.  Extreme manners in East Westland required a wholly artificial voice and an expression wholly foreign to the usual one.  Horace had never before seen Sylvia when all her manners were in evidence, and he gazed at her now in astonishment and some dismay.

“Her mother was own sister to Miss Abrahama White, and Abrahama White’s mother and my mother were own cousins on the mother’s side.  My mother was a White,” she said.  The voice came like a slender, reedy whistle from between her moveless, widened lips.  She stood as if encased in armor.  Her apron-strings stood out fiercely and were quite evident over each hip.  She held her head very high, and the cords on her long, thin neck stood out.

Poor Rose Fletcher looked a little scared and a little amused.  She cast a glance at Horace, as if for help.  He did not know what to say, but tried manfully to say it.  “I have never fully known, in such a case,” he remarked, “whether the relationship is second cousin or first cousin once removed.”  It really seemed to him that he had never known.  He looked up with relief as Henry entered the room, and Sylvia turned to him, still with her manners fully in evidence.

“Mr. Whitman, this is Miss Abrahama White’s niece,” said she.

She bowed stiffly herself as Henry bowed.  He was accustomed to Sylvia’s company manners, but still he was not himself.  He had never seen a girl like this, and he was secretly both angry and alarmed to note the difference between her and Sylvia, and all women to which he had been used.  However, his expression changed directly before the quick look of pretty, childish appeal which the girl gave him.  It was Rose’s first advance to all men whom she met, her little feeler put out to determine their dispositions towards her.  It was quite involuntary.  She was unconscious of it, but it was as if she said in so many words, “Do you mean to be kind to me?  Don’t you like the look of me?  I mean entirely well.  There is no harm in me.  Please don’t dislike me.”

Sylvia saw the glance and interpreted it.  “She looks like her mother,” she announced, harshly.  It was part of Sylvia’s extreme manners to address a guest in the third person.  However, in this case, it was in reality the clothes which had occasioned so much formality.  She immediately, after she had spoken and Henry had awkwardly murmured his assent to her opinion, noticed how tired the girl looked.  She was a slender little thing, and looked delicate in spite of a babyish roundness of face, which was due to bone-formation rather than flesh.

Sylvia gave an impression of shoving the men aside as she approached the girl.  “You look tired to death,” said she, and there was a sweet tone in her force voice.