It was a great occasion for poor Mrs.
Acton, in her helpless condition, to be confronted with a clever foreign lady, who had more manner than any lady--any dozen ladies--that she had ever seen.
"I have heard a great deal about you," she said, softly, to the Baroness.
"From your son, eh ?" Eugenia asked.

"He has talked to me immensely of you.

Oh, he talks of you as you would like," the Baroness declared; "as such a son must talk of such a mother!" Mrs.Acton sat gazing; this was part of Madame Munster's "manner." But Robert Acton was gazing too, in vivid consciousness that he had barely mentioned his mother to their brilliant guest.

He never talked of this still maternal presence,--a presence refined to such delicacy that it had almost resolved itself, with him, simply into the subjective emotion of gratitude.

And Acton rarely talked of his emotions.