"Did n't you promise, dear?"
"I don't know that I promised; not absolutely."
"But you would n't keep her here against her will?" said Mrs. Lemon, inconsequently.
"I guess she 'll get used to it," Jackson answered, with a lightness he did not altogether feel.
Mrs. Lemon looked up and down the street again, and gave a little sigh. "What a pity she is n't American!" She did not mean this as a reproach, a hint of what might have been; it was simply embarrassment resolved into speech.
"She could n't have been American," said Jackson, with decision.
"Could n't she, dear?" Mrs. Lemon spoke with a kind of respect; she felt that there were imperceptible reasons in this.
"It was just as she is that I wanted her," Jackson added.
"Even if she won't come back?" his mother asked, with a certain wonder.
"Oh, she has got to come back!" Jackson said, going down the steps.
VI.
Lady Barb, after this, did not decline to see her New York acquaintances on Sunday afternoons, though she refused for the present to enter into a project of her husband's, who thought it would be a pleasant thing that she should entertain his friends on the
