Eliot was sitting on a low tÊte-À-tÊte. He moved aside slightly to allow her room at his side.

But Una did not seem to see her husband's involuntary movement. She went to the opposite side of the room and sat down by Edith, who, with her brown hair and brown eyes, looked very pretty in garnet velvet and cashmere daintily combined into a graceful dinner-dress. Maud was buried in a book on the other side of her, but she had taken time to honor the new arrivals by putting on her best black silk with a white lace fichu to relieve its somber tone.

Vivacious Edith exclaimed instantly:

"Oh, Una, the pretty flowers that Eliot brought you—you have forgotten to wear them. Shall I run and get them for you?"

"Thank you—but no," as Edith rose. "I don't care for them. I—I have given them away."

Eliot had heard distinctly the question and answer; but there was no time for comment. Ida Hayes sailed in—a bisque doll in Nile-green silk and velvet, with Eliot's roses pinned among the laces of her V-shaped corsage.

"And to think that I went without cigars two days to buy Ida Hayes a corsage bouquet!" he said, ruefully, to himself.

But the loss of the cigars was the least part of his mortification.

He had fancied he was winning his way to his girl-bride's heart. This little incident showed him clearly his mistake.

"She is not learning to love me. Perhaps she never will," he thought, gloomily.

Ida Hayes, with the best grace in the world, sat down on the tÊte-À-tÊte beside him. She was a belle and a beauty—had been for seven years, ever since she left the school-room at eighteen—and she could have been married well long ago, but she had seen no one she fancied until she met Eliot Van Zandt at her sister's wedding three years ago. Since then her heart, as well as Sylvie's, had been set on an alliance with him, and his marriage had been a bitter blow to her self-love.

But she was a society woman. She did not wear her heart on her sleeve, and in the clear, pale-blue eyes upraised to his Eliot Van Zandt read no sign of her disappointed hopes.

"I see you looking at my flowers. That dear little thing, your wife, gave them to me," she said, carelessly.

He answered as carelessly:

"Yes, and they harmonize well with your dress."

But in his heart he longed to tear them from her breast and trample them beneath his feet. They had taught him a bitter lesson—one he would not soon forget.

Dinner was announced, and he took Ida into the dining-room. Bryant gave Sylvie his arm, and Una followed with her sisters-in-law, hiding with a smile her pain at the preference Eliot had shown Miss Hayes.

"How he must hate me, for he can not help thinking that but for me he would not have lost her. It was right to give her the flowers. She had really the best right to them," she said miserably to herself.

The flowers, the lights, the china and silver of the well-appointed table flashed confusedly before her eyes. She could see nothing clearly but the pretty wax-doll face of Miss Hayes as she sat opposite to Eliot and talked to him incessantly.

Glancing up and down the long table at the fair faces of the five ladies, she said, gayly:

"Two gentlemen and five ladies! Only two have cavaliers. There are three of us too many."

Una thought, with keen shame and inexpressible bitterness:

"Only one too many, and that one is poor little me!"

She made a great effort to eat, and swallowed some food, although it half choked her; but as soon as they rose from the table she slipped away and went up to the school-room, where Mrs. Wilson, whose impaired digestion abhorred late dinners, was placidly taking some milk and oatmeal by way of supper.

"Oh, my dear, have you got a fever? Your eyes shine so brightly, and your cheeks are quite flushed!" exclaimed the good governess, anxiously.

"I am not sick; I dare say I am excited. There is company, you know, and I thought I should not be missed if I stole away up here with you," Una answered, with affected carelessness.

Mrs. Wilson smiled on her pupil, and answered, kindly:

"I'm glad you came, dear; but, of course, you will be missed. Your husband would miss you, if there was a room full of company."

Una answered in a strange tone:

"No, not to-night; for Miss Ida Hayes is there."

Mrs. Wilson put down her glass of milk and looked curiously at the speaker. She began to comprehend the cause of her strange looks and words. She said to herself:

"This pretty little girl-bride has grown jealous of some meaningless attention of Eliot to Miss Hayes. She loves her husband, and the boy is somehow too stupid to see it, or, perhaps, he does not care. I would speak to him, but I do not like to meddle in so delicate an affair."

Aloud, she said gently:

"I like to have you up here with me, but your husband and friends will think I am selfish, dear; so you had better go back to the drawing-room. Miss Ida Hayes is not charming enough to make up to Eliot for your absence."

Una turned around suddenly and looked at her gravely.

"Very well, then; I will go, since you don't want me; but I shall go to my own room," she said.

And she did, and there Edith found her, pretending to read, when she came to seek her half an hour later.

"You selfish child! put down your book. We are going to have some music, and we want your alto," she said.

"I can not sing to-night; my head aches," Una answered; and none of Edith's arguments could alter her refusal. She was obliged to go down alone and make excuses for her sister-in-law.

"She has a headache, and can not come down," she said; and Sylvie laughed in her sleeve.

"She is jealous of Ida," she thought, maliciously.