and the string
of tiny Roman pearls she sometimes clasped around her throat bore silent
witness to her effort to live up to the story of Ederyn, and keep tryst
with all that was expected of her.

When a long line of blue-blooded ancestors has handed down a heritage of
proud traditions and family standards, it is no easy matter to be all
that is expected of an only child. But Lloyd was meeting all
expectations, responding to the influence of beauty and culture with
which she had always been surrounded, as unconsciously as a bud unfolds
to the sunshine. Her ambition "to make undying music in the world," to
follow in the footsteps of her beautiful grandmother Amanthis, was in
itself a reaching-up to one of the family ideals.

When the girls began calling her the Princess Winsome, unconsciously she
began to reach up to be worthy of that title also, but when she found
that Mary Ware was taking her as a model Maid of Honor, in all that that
title implies, she began to feel that a burden was laid upon her
shoulders. She had had such admirers before: little Magnolia Budine at
Lloydsboro Seminary, and Cornie Dean at Warwick Hall. It was pleasant to
know that they considered her perfection, but it was a strain to feel
that she was their model, and that they copied her in everything, her
faults as well as her graces. They had followed her like shadows, and
such devotion grows tiresome.

Happily for Mary Ware, whatever else she did, she never bored any one.
She was too independent and original for that. When she found an
occasion to talk, she made the most of her opportunity, and talked with
all her might, but her sensitiveness to surroundings always told her
when it was time to retire into the background, and she could be so dumb
as to utterly efface herself when the time came for her to keep silent.

A long list of delights filled her first letter home, but the one most
heavily underscored, and chief among them all, was the fact that the big
girls did not seem to consider her a "little pitcher" or a "tag." No
matter where they went or what they talked about, she was free to follow
and to listen. It was interesting to the verge of distraction when they
talked merely of Warwick Hall and the schoolgirls, or recalled various
things that had happened at the first house-party. But when they
discussed the approaching wedding, the guests, the gifts, the
decorations, and the feast, she almost held her breath in her eager
enjoyment of