A mental struggle, p. 44

36 A Mental Struggle.

Things, it must be confessed, do not often strike Lady

Olivia; but this comes home to her. Involuntarily, and

hardly knowing why, she glances across the room to where

Imogen is sitting, calm and self-possessed, saymg polite

nothings to Miss Brown, whom now it is her misfortune

to have to entertain. She is in an intellectual purgatory,

but she shows nothing of it. She looks serene and con¬

tented {coidd polite hypocrisy further go ?); and Lady

Olivia, seeing no signs of a late combat on her face, resigns

herself to believe that she and " the younger Mr. Brown "

.__she has not yet taken to heart his Christian name—did

not come to loggerheads, and that Felix had not been

driven to her (Lady Olivia) for shelter. Having assured

herself of so much, she leans back in her chair -with a

sigh of relief, and permits herself to be amused by

Felix.

E.vperientia docet ' "UTien a quarter of an hour has

passed. Lady Olivia, who has many and varied experiences,

and who is quite a finished judge by this time of what a

young man ought to be, says to herself, " Here is some one

gr-eatly to be liked ! " And then, when another quarter

has gone by, " I am speaking to a gentleman ! " And

then, when a third quarter has vanished into the greedy

past, she says to herself emphatically, " This is a young

man after my own heart! ''

She is (juite sure now that Imogen had been somewhat

hasty in her estimate of this member of the family, at all

e\ents—and, indeed, of the othei's also; at least, of most

of them.

Miss Brown honest Lady Olivia cannot say she likes as

yet (the saving clause here comes in as a salve to her

fharity); but Mrs. Brown is quiet and agi'ceable, and the

old man, in spite of his hearty laugh and his old-fashioned

ways, is not what she (Lady Olivia) has been accustomed

to consider vulgar.

In her good graces they stand as follows : Felix fii'st,

his father next, his mother after that.

With Patricia comes the father first, the son next, the

women nowhere.

With Sandie, nobody in particular first, but Miss Brown