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"Of course we must dine with Mrs Carfry, dearest," Archer said; and his wife looked at him with an anxious frown across thehouse breakfast-table

In all the rainy desert of autumnal London there were only two people whom the Newland Archers knew; and these two they had sedulously avoided, in confornified" to force one's self on the notice of one's acquaintances in foreign countries

Mrs Archer and Janey, in the course of their visits to Europe, had so unflinchingly lived up to this principle, and met the friendly advances of their fellow-travellers with an air of such impenetrable reserve, that they had aled a ith a "foreigner" other than those employed in hotels and railway-stations

Their own compatriots--save those previously known or properly accredited--they treated with an even more pronounced disdain; so that, unless they ran across a Chivers, a Dagonet or a Mingott, their months abroad were spent in an unbroken tete-a-tete But the utht at Botzen one of the two English ladies in the rooe (whose names, dress and social situation were already intimately known to Janey) had knocked on the door and asked if Mrs Archer had a bottle of liniment The other lady--the intruder's sister, Mrs Carfry--had been seized with a sudden attack of bronchitis; and Mrs Archer, who never travelled without a complete family pharmacy, was fortunately able to produce the required remedy

Mrs Carfry was very ill, and as she and her sister Miss Harle were travelling alone they were profoundly grateful to the Archer ladies, who supplied theenious comforts and whose efficient maid helped to nurse the invalid back to health

When the Archers left Botzen they had no idea of ever seeing Mrs Carfry and Miss Harle again Nothing, to Mrs Archer's nified" than to force one's self on the notice of a "foreigner" to whom one had happened to render an accidental service But Mrs Carfry and her sister, to whom this point of vieas unknown, and ould have found it utterly incoratitude to the "delightful A fidelity they seized every chance ofMrs Archer and Janey in the course of their continental travels, and displayed a supernatural acuteness in finding out when they were to pass through London on their way to or from the States The intimacy becahted at Brown's Hotel, found themselves awaited by two affectionate friends who, like themselves, cultivated ferns in Wardian cases, made macrame lace, read the memoirs of the Baroness Bunsen and had views about the occupants of the leading London pulpits As Mrs Archer said, itof London" to know Mrs Carfry and Miss Harle; and by the tied the tie between the faht" to send a wedding invitation to the two English ladies, who sent, in return, a pretty bouquet of pressed Alpine flowers under glass And on the dock, when Newland and his wife sailed for England, Mrs Archer's last word had been: "You must take May to see Mrs Carfry"