“Of course not.”  Madame leaned over her and stroked the dark hair, waved and coiled in quite the latest fashion.  “There are plenty of books and magazines in the library.”

Madame went upstairs, followed at a respectful distance by Mr. Boffin, waving his plumed tail.  He, too, took his afternoon nap, curled up cosily upon the silken quilt at the foot of his mistress’s couch.  In the room adjoining, Rose rested for an hour also, though she usually spent the time with a book.

Left to herself, Isabel walked back and forth idly, greatly allured by the forbidden piano.  She looked over, carelessly, the pile of violin music Allison had left there.  Some of the sheets were torn and had been pasted together, all were marked in pencil with hieroglyphics, and most of them were stamped, in purple, “Allison Kent,” with a Berlin or Paris address written in below.

Isabel had met very few men, in the course of her twenty years.  For this reason, possibly, she remembered every detail of the two weeks she had spent at Aunt Francesca’s and the hours with Allison, on the veranda, when he chose to amuse himself with the pretty, credulous child.  It seemed odd to have him coming to the house again, though, unless he came to dinner, he usually spent the time playing, to Rose’s accompaniment.  She had not seen him alone.

She surveyed herself in the long, gilt-framed mirror, and was well pleased with the image of youth and beauty the mirror gave back.  The bell rang and she pinned up a stray lock carefully.  It was probably someone to see Aunt Francesca, but there was a pleasing doubt.  It might be the twins, though she had not returned their call.

Presently Allison came in, his cheeks glowing from his long walk in the cold.  “Silver Girl,” he smiled, “where are the spangles, and are you alone?”

“The spangles are upstairs waiting for candlelight,” answered Isabel, as he took her small, cool hand, “and I’m very much alone—­or was.”

“Where are the others?”

“Taking naps.”

“I hope I haven’t tired Rose out,” said Allison, offering Isabel a chair.  He had unconsciously dropped the prefix of “Cousin.”  “We’ve been working hard lately.”

“Is she going with you on your tour?”

“I don’t know.  I wish she could go, but I haven’t the heart to drag father or Aunt Francesca along with us, and otherwise, it would be—­ well, unconventional, you know.  The conventions make me dead tired,” he added, with evident sincerity.

“And yet,” said Isabel, looking into the fire, “they are all in the interests of morality.  If you’re conventional, you’ll be good, negatively.  It isn’t good manners for a man to shoot a lady or to sign a check with another man’s name and get it cashed.  If you’re conventional, you’re not always explaining things.”

“Very true,” laughed Allison, “but sometimes ’the greatest good for the greatest number’ bears heavily upon the few.”