"Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong and Miss Lefroy. Lady Portrann at home Tuesday, the 16th of January, 10 P.M. Dancing."

"Addie, that means a ball, doesn't it? How delightful! You're going, of course?"

"I suppose so. Mr. Armstrong wishes it."

"And you'll wear your white brochÉ and pearls. Oh, isn't it well for you?" groans Pauline wistfully. "Miss Lefroy—that's me, of course. It was nice of them to ask me, wasn't it, Addie?"

"Yes. I suppose they did not know you were still in the school-room, Polly."

"I'm past seventeen, and eldest daughter now that you're married and done for, Addie, and I do think it's hard lines keeping me down."

"If Mr. Armstrong wishes to give you the advantage of education, no matter how late, I think you ought to be extremely grateful to him, instead of grumbling as you continually do," says Mrs. Armstrong severely.

"You're so remarkably well educated yourself, Addie," retorts Pauline, "you can well afford to preach. Didn't you see how Tom stared the other night when you asked him which would take longest, to go to New York or Calcutta? I'm sure, if he keeps me in the school-room, he ought to keep you too. 'Lady Portrann at home, 10 P.M. Dancing.' How lovely it sounds! How I wish I could go, just to see what it would be like! I wouldn't dance, you know, Addie, or wear a silk dress, or anything in that way, but just sit in a corner and look on quietly; and—and don't you think, if you put it to your husband mildly like, that he might—might—"

"I think nothing in the matter, my dear," answers Addie decisively; "and I'll put nothing to my husband, mildly or otherwise; so it's of no use asking me."

"Don't then!"

"I won't."

The sisters glare at each other; then Addie moves away, humming a tune, and the vexed question is not alluded to again that day.

The next morning, when she is seated at her desk, composing her acceptance, Pauline bounces in with dancing eyes and leans over her.

"'Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong have much pleasure in accepting—' It won't do—it won't do! You'll have to begin again, my dear, though this is the third sheet I see you've spoiled. Begin again, Addie, begin: I'll dictate to you—

"'Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong and Miss Lefroy have much pleasure in accepting Lady Portrann's kind invitation for Tuesday, the 16th proximo.' Yes, you may stare; but I'm going to the ball. Tom says I may, if I can get your consent; and I know I shall get that—you couldn't be such a—a—fiend, Addie, as to refuse when he has consented?"

"I suppose I couldn't," she answers meekly, attacking her fourth sheet. "If I did, you'd lead me such a life that—"

"I should, dear," admits Miss Lefroy briskly—"I certainly should. Now give me the note; I'll put it into the post-bag myself."

"Wait a moment, Polly! About your dress? As you don't mean to dance, I suppose one of your ordinary evening grenadines, with a little furbishing up, will do very well?"

"But, as I do happen to mean to dance if I'm asked, one of my ordinary evening grenadines won't do for the occasion at all."

"But I thought you said—"

"I said nothing to Tom, but just asked if I might go, and he answered 'Yes,' without conditions or qualifications of any kind. So I'll go now in regular tenue."

"Then you can have one of my trousseau dresses—that pretty blue silk, if you like; our figures are not very unlike, and a little altering—"

"Thanks, dear—you are very kind; but, as this is my first ball, I must appear in virgin white, and I could not exactly wear your wedding dress, could I?"

"I shall wear it myself."

"Exactly. So I think we had better order the carriage this morning, and we'll drive to Kelvick and interview Armine at once on the subject. I know what I'll have to a flounce—the exact copy of a dress described in the 'Queen' last week—it was worn at a Sandringham ball—all white satin and gauze with clustering bunches of white lilac and maiden-hair, and a corsage of that lovely pearl passementerie."

"Pearl passementerie, satin, gauze! Pauline, are you aware that those are about three of the most expensive materials you could hit upon? Where is the money to come from?"

"The money is here; don't trouble your head about that!" breaks in Pauline, triumphantly displaying a bundle of crisp notes. "He gave me it at once, and said besides that anything over and above was to be entered to your account at Madame Armine's. Now are you satisfied?"

"Satisfied!" she echoes passionately. "Satisfied! Oh, Polly, Polly, dear sister, I wish you wouldn't—wouldn't take money like that! And you know I have no account at Madame Armine's—you know I haven't!"

"Stuff!"

"Our hands are always outstretched—always; we give nothing and take everything. How can you bear it—how?"

"Oh, Addie, I have no patience with you! You talk of your husband as if he were a stranger, a complete outsider—as if we had no interest in him or he in us; it is a shame! I protest I understand him better than you. I saw at once that it was a pleasure to him to give me a dress; and I foresee too that it will give him pleasure to see me fashionably and becomingly got up on the 16th. I'm determined not to balk him. I think your feeling in the matter is both unnatural and absurd—absurd in the extreme!"

Miss Lefroy has her way, and that same afternoon is fingering gauzes, satins, and laces at Madame Armine's. Her sister, seeing that it would be of no use venturing on delicate ground again, with a feeling of impotence to wrestle against her will in particular, and the tide of events in general, gives in with a weary sigh.

On the night of the 16th Armstrong is standing under the drawing-room chandelier, anxiously working his large bony hands into a pair of evening gloves of treacherous texture and about half a size too small for him, when his womenfolk rustle in, fully equipped for conquest.

"Do you like me, Tom?"

He looks down at his wife standing before him in the bridal finery which she refused to wear at the altar, her fair white shoulders shining through folds of delicate lace, a necklet of pearls—his wedding-gift—encircling her pretty throat, a bunch of pale pink roses loosely hanging from her rough brown hair.

"How fair, how bright, how young you look, my love, my love!" he thinks, with a sort of hungry pain; while her gray eyes meet his with the strange expression they always wear now, half wistful, half defiant, and a little scared as well—an expression which he sometimes feels, with a pang of impotent remorse, that no act, or word, or wish of his can ever chase thence again, even if he labored as manfully as he is now doing to the end of his days.

"Do I like you," he repeats softly—"like you, Addie!" Then, with a quick return to his usual self-possessed, matter-of-fact manner—"Certainly, my dear; your dress is very nice indeed."

"Rapturous commendation!" she answers, with a light vexed laugh.

"Now, Addie, clear away; it is my turn, please. What have you to say to me, Mr. Armstrong?"

"You?" he cries, staggering back, and shading his eyes as if overcome by the vision. "Who are you, pray—the Queen of Sheba?—Cleopatra?"

"Miss Pauline Lefroy, at your service, exemplifying the old proverb of 'Fine feathers make fine birds.' Now, honestly, what do you think of my feathers, Tom?"

Pauline steps forward, giving her train a brisk twitch, and poses under the chandelier, her lithe stately figure draped in clouds of silky gauze, her masses of dusky hair piled high on her head, interwoven with chains of pearls, her lovely gypsy face sparkling with the glow of excitement and anticipated pleasure.

quotes Armstrong dramatically. "Will that homage to your plumage do fair sister-in-law?"

"Yes, it sounds like Shakespeare or Milton. Shakespeare, is it? 'Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of Night like a—' What?"

"'Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear.'"

"It is a fine idea, strongly put—better than being told flatly that I was nice, like a bit of well-fried beefsteak. And so you think I shall do?"

"By Jove, yes," thinks he, in startled admiration. "I rather think you will, Miss Polly! What a splendid specimen of womanhood you are, to be sure! Strange I never seemed to take in the power of your comeliness until to-night!"

He glances at the two sisters standing side by side—at the girl, lastly, who, in a ragged cotton dress, without even the ornament of ladylike neatness, without one word or smile of attractive intent, chained his senses in one luckless moment and robbed him of his peace forever. He shakes his head; it is of no use going over the old story again; the mischief is done, and there is an end of it.

"She is not beautiful, my little Addie, she is but a pallid spring-blossom beside the tropical coloring of her sister," he thinks bitterly. "Few men, I suppose, would waste a glance on her when they could feed on the other's beauty; and yet she is all I want—all. My life would be full if I had her. Oh, the irony of fate to think that what is by law my own, my very own, what no man covets, I can not grasp—to think that she, the delight of my eyes, the one love of my life, must live under the same roof with me, and yet be as far apart as if the poles sundered us! And we are drifting further day by day; we can not even be friends. I have more in common now with her sisters, even with her cub of a brother, than with her. A wall of constraint is rising hourly between us. We can not talk together five minutes without falling into an uncomfortable silence, or tripping over matter we had agreed to bury. I wonder how it will all end! By Jove, I should like to have a peep at our position, say, this day ten years! Please Providence, the boys will have struck out lines for themselves ere then, and some fellows will have induced the girls to quit my fireside too, if—if I see fit to make it worth their while. Miss Pauline, with five or six thousand pounds, would be a prize many men would like to secure. Lottie too would have a chance under the same conditions; there would be only Addie and I left to drift into autumn together. By Jove, I should like to know how it will end! Hang it, my glove is gone at last!" he exclaims aloud, in dismay.

"I thought as much, Tom. I hope you have another pair, because the most skillful needle-and-thread in the world wouldn't bridge that chasm. Oh, I see you have another pair! Now, will you concentrate your powerful intellect on my train for a minute? I'm going to walk slowly from the piano to the window, and I want you to tell me it you can detect the faintest outline of steel or wire, the merest suggestion of string or tape anywhere."

"No, Pauline, on my honor as a British merchant!" he answers solemnly. "I can detect not one trace of the inward mechanism of your dress. It is veiled to me in darkest art. You are inflated in a manner wonderful and fearful to behold."

"I believe you! That is what I call the perfection of a fan-tail; Armine is the only dress-maker in Kelvick who can work them like that," remarks Pauline complacently. "I flatter myself there won't be another train surpassing mine in the room. And fancy, Tom—Addie wanted me to appear in a home-made muslin or grenadine, with a blue silk sash and blue ribbons in my hair, like a school-girl going out to a suburban tea-party! Wasn't I right to resist? Haven't I your entire approbation?"

"Certainly, I think the most extreme measure would justify the end you have achieved, Miss Lefroy," he answers, laughing.

"Well, one end you have certainly achieved, my dear sister," says Addie ruefully. "You have certainly crushed my poor dress, put me out of the field altogether, which is rather hard lines, considering I'm a—a bride and all that. Nobody will look at me when you are near."

"Then I must keep well out of your way, dear," she answers sweetly. "Ah, here comes the carriage at last! Where's my fan, bouquet, handkerchief? Oh, dear, if I should get myself crushed or squeezed before I arrive! Tom, I engage the front of the brougham; you and Addie must sit together at the back. It's wrong to separate those whom Heaven has joined together, you know."

"Pauline," cries Addie sharply, "I wish you would not make those flippant remarks; they're extremely unbecoming!"

Pauline raises her saucy eyes to her brother-in-law's disturbed face, and asks innocently—

"Am I flippant, Tom? Have I said anything wrong? Tell me—do you want the back all to yourself?"

"I want neither the back nor the front, my dear," he answers placidly. "I'd rather not be brought into close contact with the mysteries of your dress. I'm going to enjoy my cigar on the box-seat."

"Are you? I dare say you'll like it better than being squashed between us," assents Pauline lightly.

"You are going to do nothing of the kind," interposes Addie, with flaming face. "I will not allow it. Going to sit outside for a seven miles' drive on a snowy night in January, just to save a few wretched flowers from being crushed! Pauline, I'm ashamed of you!"

"My dear Addie, don't get so hot about it, it was my own suggestion, not your sister's. I do not mind the weather in the least. It's not a bad kind of night for the season of the year, and I have a famous overcoat lined with fur, and my cigar."

They are all three standing in the porch. Addie suddenly walks back into the hall, and begins undoing her wraps; they follow her in quickly.

"What are you doing? What is the matter?"

"I am not going to the ball, Pauline; I should not like to crush your flounces, dear," she answers, with sparkling eyes.

Pauline crimsons.

"Addie, how—how spiteful you are!" she cries, angrily. "You know I did not want your husband to sit on the box-seat; he suggested it himself. There is plenty of room for us all inside. Oh, come along, Addie; don't be so nasty and spiteful!"

But she is not to be propitiated; she shakes off her sister's protesting hands, and moves away upstairs.

"I am not nasty or spiteful, Pauline; but I do not feel inclined for this ball. I feel a headache coming on. Mr. Armstrong will take you there without me."

Pauline remains motionless, and casts an appealing look at her brother-in-law.

"Tom, go after her—see what you can do. I should only make matters worse."

After a second's hesitation, he follows Addie up the stairs, and lays his hand gently on her shoulder.

"Addie, come back; I won't go to the ball without you. Come back!"

"What nonsense! You can go very well without me. I do not care for it, I tell you."

She speaks sharply and sullenly enough; but a few hot tears trickle down her cheeks as she turns away her face from his scrutiny.

Before he knows what he is about, he takes her handkerchief, and wipes them away softly, whispering, beseechingly—

"I will do what you like, sit where you like. Come, my own dear little girl—come!"

She puts her hand on his arm.

"You will sit inside with us?"

"Of course, if you wish it. I would not have proposed the box-seat if I had known you would not like it, Addie. I never thought of the weather. Why, I have slept out of doors in Canadian backwoods in three times as severe weather as this, and I'm alive to tell the tale—ah, scores of times!"

The drive is an uncomfortable one for all three, though Pauline, anxious to remove the impression of the scene, rattles "nineteen to the dozen." Her sister speaks not a word, and Armstrong is too wrapped up in somber, anxious thought to respond.

Clearly as one would read an open book, he can now read the page of his little wife's troubled life—can read the meaning of flushing cheek, quivering lip, tearful eye—can see the passion of revolt that stirs her sensitive being—can feel how her pride, her delicacy is daily, hourly, outraged by the condition of their lives—and his heart yearns over her.

"If," he thinks, with an impotent sigh, "I had chosen the other sister, it would have been different; her coarser, more selfish nature would have adapted itself to the circumstances without a pang. She would have accepted without murmur or protest the best I had to give, would have put her hands into my pocket and spent my money with the freedom and insouciance of esteemed wifehood, would never have disturbed my equanimity by one of those piteous pleading looks, half pain, half defiance, that thrill through me with a foreboding of coming tragedy. I wonder how it will all end! Why will she not accept the inevitable, and give me peace at least? Peace is all I ask from her. If she would take things as her sisters and her brothers do, I should in time become reconciled to my fate, should learn to feel toward her as I feel toward them; but she will not—she will not. She will go her own way, and keep my heart in a ferment, watching her every movement, straining my ears to catch every tone of her ever-changeful voice."

He looks with a sort of admiring impatience at her, as she sits by his side, her eyes closed, the trace of tears staining her flushed cheeks, and something tells him that it will always be so between them, that she will never harden, never learn to eat his bread with the easy unconsciousness of her kindred, never suffer him to despise her, and thus emancipate himself.

Armstrong is an epicure in sexual sentiment. He can love no woman whom he cannot esteem. The loveliest face shielding a venal soul has no attraction for him; and women for the possession of whose frail fairness men in his rank of life have bartered the hard-earned wages of years, have abandoned home, wife, and children, to him are as innocuous as the homeliest-featured crone. Having always been a comparatively successful man, in his many wanderings he has been waylaid by harpies of various nationalities, experienced in attack; but honeyed speech or melting glance has never charmed a guinea from his pocket or a responsive smile from his granite lips—and this through no sense of moral or religious rectitude, but simply because he can not value the favoring of any woman in whom self-respect does not govern every other feeling, sway every action of her life. The woman he loves shall be a lady to the core, pure-minded, dainty, sensitive, and proud. In his wife he recognizes these qualities, and worships them accordingly; and yet, with the perverse selfishness innate even in the best of mankind, he would fain see her stripped of them all in order to shake himself free from her thralldom and heal up the wound she has unwittingly dealt his pride and self-esteem.

He knows, if she can but lower herself in his eyes by some act of meanness, folly, or ingratitude, her downfall will be permanent, and he will regain the even tenor of his life, and be his own master again.

"Here we are at last, Addie; wake up—wake up! How lovely the house looks blazing with light! Listen to the music; they must have begun dancing. Oh, Tom, get out quick!"

However, when they appear on the gay and crowded scene, Miss Pauline's effervescence somewhat subsides. A feeling of diffidence, of timidity almost, seizes her. She half shrinks behind her brother-in-law's broad shoulders when one of their hostess's sons appears, a smiling partner in tow. However, it is Mrs. Armstrong who is borne off first; and then Pauline steps a little forward and sends her roving eye round the room with success. A little later Addie returns breathless, with eyes sparkling with excitement and pleasure.

"I've had such a lovely dance, Tom; I never thought I should like it so much or keep in step as I did! Where's Polly? How is she getting on?"

Armstrong points across the room, where Miss Lefroy, with her deer-like head erect, stands surrounded by a group of young men eagerly seeking to inscribe her name on their cards.

"She's getting on fairly for a beginner, isn't she? I don't fancy she'll trouble us much more with her society to-night."

He is right. Miss Pauline, whether ignorant of or regardless of the etiquette of ball-room proprieties, returns no more to the corner she left in maiden trepidation at the request of a dapper little squire, fair-haired and blue-eyed, whose heart she stormed the first moment she entered the room.

"Tom," says Addie, two hours later, when she returns again, a little exhausted with the unusual exercise, to the spot where he stands so patiently propped up against the wall watching the Élite of Nutshire taking their pleasure, "look at Pauline; she is dancing again with that blue-eyed boy—the fourth time, I think. I tried to attract her attention two or three times; but she either did not or would not see me. I don't know much about the proprieties; but don't you think—"

"I know even less about them than you, my dear. I think I have not been to half a dozen balls in my life, and never before as the guardian of a young lady's morals; so I won't presume to advise you. It seems to me she is enjoying herself in a very innocent and above-board manner. I wouldn't try to stop her."

"Do you know her partner, Tom?"

"Oh, yes. Jack Everard of Broom Hill, a thorough little gentleman and a general favorite in the county, I believe, but not much of a lady's man. I'm surprised to see him here."

"Horsy?"

"Yes, and doggy; he keeps a famous breed of greyhounds. Pauline seems to have made quite a conquest."

"I wonder what they are talking about so earnestly? Dogs, I suppose; Pauline loves dogs, you know, better almost than human beings."

"Hem!"

"You think she is flirting? Oh, there you make a mistake! There is nothing Pauline despises so much as flirting and love-making and nonsense. I wouldn't be the man to make a soft speech to her, I know!"

"Everard is a plucky little fellow."

"Pauline's snubs are hard to get over."

"I say, Addie—look! There's an engagement going on now; the tall cavalryman seems to be getting the worst of it. I suppose it's about a disputed dance; they're referring to their cards. How red Everard is! the quiver of his nostrils indicates bloodshed, nothing else."

"He just looks like an angry turkey-cock."

"And, by Jove, look at your sister, Addie! Look at the supreme indifference of her attitude, the queenly wave of her fan! Wouldn't you say she was the heroine of half a dozen London seasons at the least? Bravo, Polly, bravo! You'll get on, my dear."

Miss Lefroy is the acknowledged belle of the evening; every man in the room seeks to be introduced to her, and people who for the last twelve years have sat in the pew next to hers at church, who have never taken the trouble of noticing her presence during her long Cinderellahood, now load her with fulsome compliments and attentions when they see the tide of popular favor turning her way; and she receives it all with the dignity and gracious indifference of one bred in the purple and fed on adulations from her cradle. Poor Jack Everard never suspects that the few hot words so gravely yet soothingly suppressed by his lovely partner, that escaped him after supper, are the first whispers of love that have ever tickled her cold ear, that this is the first night any one has told her she is fair in the eyes of men.

"Miss Lefroy," exclaims that young gentleman in a stealthy whisper when the night is far advanced and the ball-room thinning visibly, "there's a plot against you; they want to take you home. Your brother-in-law is skirmishing for you briskly in all the passages. Unless you deliver yourself into my hands at once, you can not fail to be caught."

"They want to go? Oh, impossible," she cried in dismay, "when I'm engaged for half a dozen dances yet! It's quite early; they couldn't be so selfish!"

"Couldn't they! Your sister says that Mr. Armstrong is very tired and has to be up early in the morning to go to his business, and that she won't wait another minute. She commissioned me to bring you to her at once; allow me."

She puts her hand mechanically on his arm, and he leads her off in the opposite direction to that where Addie, sleepy and impatient, sits waiting, knowing that her husband's thoroughbreds have been pawing the gravel for the last half hour in the frosty night, and that he himself, somewhat weary, is longing for a few hours' rest before the busy day begins.

The culprits are passing through a distant conservatory, when a tall handsome girl with masses of golden hair stops them, unceremoniously and holds up her card for Everard's inspection.

"Yes, Jack; indeed you may blush! To three dances you scribbled your name, and never came up for one. If we moved in a different sphere of life I think my feelings would find rather strong expression."

Pauline crimsons to the roots of her hair, and, scenting an insult, draws away haughtily; but her suspicions are speedily allayed.

The young lady cuts Everard's excuses short.

"There, there! I'll forgive you, on condition that you present me to your partner, whom I am anxious to know. Our mothers were friends long ago, before either of us was born."

He speedily complies with her request.

"Miss Lefroy, will you allow me to introduce you to my cousin, Miss Wynyard, who is anxious to make your acquaintance?"

The girls bow. Miss Wynyard puts out her hand and says, with a frank laugh—

"Miss Lefroy, do you know that this is a very generous overture on my part, considering the attitude that you and I must henceforth assume toward each other?"

"I don't understand. What attitude?" asks Pauline, puzzled, yet interested.

"That of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth; of Mrs. Clive and Mrs. Oldfield—the rival queens, in fact. You've deposed me to-night; for three years since I came out I have been the undisputed belle of Nutshire society—haven't I, Jack, haven't I? You know you can't deny it, sir!"—impatiently to her cousin, who receives her bold statement with a contemptuous chuckle.

"I don't deny that you have been pretty popular, Flo," he answers quietly; "but let me tell you, my dear, that you did not go down with lots of fellows I know. They thought you a good deal too free and fast. They may have liked to talk with you and have enjoyed your society for the time; but afterward—afterward—I've heard them—heard them—"

Miss Wynyard's face flushes; her bold eyes droop for a second.

"Isn't a cousin a detestable institution, Miss Lefroy?" she says, with a vexed laugh. "Don't you believe a word he says; you can get my character from any one you like but him, and you'll hear there is nothing very reprehensible in me."

"I'll take your character from yourself," answers Pauline, who finds herself taking a sudden fancy to this outspoken young person.

"Thank you. Then you must learn that my bark is worse than my bite, and that, though I'm fast and speak out plainly, I'm not a bad person at bottom, and not a bit of a sneak. What I have to say I say to your face, and you know the worst of me at once. Will you take me as you find me and strike up a friendship with me? Half the men and all the old women of the place will swear that I shall hate you like poison for being younger and handsomer and fresher than myself. Suppose you and I strike up a defensive alliance in the cause of common womanhood, and refute their slanders with an eternal friendship?"

"Don't, Miss Lefroy, don't!" puts in Everard aggravatingly. "You don't know what her bark is when she's in full cry. Her style is as bad—"

"Be quiet, Jack, do! I'm not speaking to you."

"And I'm not listening to him in the least, Miss Wynyard," says Pauline quickly; "and I'm quite ready to enter an alliance with you on the spot."

"Done! We'll never let a man or the pattern of a frock come between us—never."

"Certainly not."

"The last friend I had—for whom I'd have sacrificed my very life—broke from me because I happened to copy her Ascot dress and look better in it than she did."

"You may copy every article of clothing I wear," says Pauline warmly.

"Thank you; you are thorough. I'll send over my maid to-morrow to take off the cut of that train—it was the best-setting one in the room. And now nearest and dearest must part. You'll see me soon—before the end of the week. By the bye, what's your name?"

"Pauline. And yours?"

"Florence."

"Good-night, Florence."

"Good-night, Pauline."

Thus Miss Pauline cements the first friendship outside her erst all sufficing family-circle, a friendship which, as the months go by, takes her further and further from the sister with whom she has hitherto shared every thought, every hope of her life, and who has sacrificed herself irretrievably to give her a home.