"
"Oh no, papa. I shall be delighted."
Elfrida was sitting beside her mother on the sofa, and
at the dose of this proposition Mr. Bell came and sat
there too. There was a silence for a moment while they
all three confronted the line of pictures leaning against
the wall Then Elfrida began to laugh, and she went on
laughing, to the astonishment of her parents, until the
tears came into her eyes. She stopped as suddenly, kissed
her mother and father, and went upstairs. "I'm afraid
you've hurt Her feelings, Leslie," said Mrs. Bell, when
she had well gone.
But Elfrida's feelings had not been hurt, though one
might say that the evening left her sense of humor rather
sore. At that moment she was dallying with the temptation
to describe the whole scene in a letter to a valued friend
in Philadelphia, who would have appreciated it with mirth.
In the end she did not write. It would have been too
humiliating.
CHAPTER III.
"_Pas mal, parbleu!_" Lucien remarked, with pursed-out
lips, running his fingers through his shock of coarse
hair, and reflectively scratching the top of his big head
as he stepped closer to Nadie Palicsky's elbow, where
she stood at her easel in his crowded atelier.
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