all it would indeed be that of Philistinism. She might have been
(for there are guardian-spirits, I suppose, of all great principles)
the very angel of the pink of propriety--putting the pink for a
principle, though I'd rather put some dismal cold blue. Mark
Ambient, apparently, ten years before, had simply and quite
inevitably taken her for an angel, without asking himself of what.
He had been right in calling my attention to her beauty. In looking
for some explanation of his original surrender to her I saw more than
before that she was, physically speaking, a wonderfully cultivated
human plant--that he might well have owed her a brief poetic
inspiration. It was impossible to be more propped and pencilled,
more delicately tinted and petalled.

If I had had it in my heart to think my host a little of a hypocrite
for appearing to forget at table everything he had said to me in our
walk, I should instantly have cancelled such a judgement on
reflecting that the good news his wife was able to give him about
their little boy was ground enough for any optimistic reaction. It
may have come partly, too, from a certain compunction at having
breathed to me at all harshly on the cool fair lady who sat there--a
desire to prove himself not after all so mismated. Dolcino continued
to be much better, and it had been promised him he should come
downstairs after his dinner. As soon as we had risen from our own
meal Mark slipped away, evidently for the purpose of going to his
child; and no sooner had I observed this than I became aware his wife
had simultaneously vanished. It happened that Miss Ambient and I,
both at the same moment, saw the tail of her dress whisk out of a
doorway; an incident that led the young lady to smile at me as if I
now knew all the secrets of the Ambients. I passed with her into the
garden and we sat down on a dear old bench that rested against the