grace as we might find in a person who with
every fault had yet some quality of candor. Pyramidal masses of
hydrangea flanked the entrance-door and spread in opaline patches upon
the lawn; a round of ornamental water, with a central statue and a
border of sea-conchs, supported the green pads of lilies,--the pink
variety. The estate was bounded on the street by a fence of wrought
iron,--more ponderous lace, in this case black.

In these two houses lived two women who frankly could not bear
each other. We had nearly said two beautiful women, but the one
impressed rather by charm than any unusual felicity of form, and the
other, strikingly effective, "stunning," as she was frequently
described, displeased almost as many as she pleased. Yet each of
them had heard herself called beautiful often enough to have
assumed the bearing and outlook upon life of a beautiful woman: there
was something positive in the claim of each that her will should be
given weight. We have said they hated each other: but each fair
bosom harbored a very different sentiment from the other. Celia
Compton, the charming, who lived in the peaceful ancient house,
hated Judith Bray, the red-blooded beauty for whom had been built
the architectural monstrosity on the main street, merely as one
hates smoke in the eyes, a grating sound, or shudders at the
thought of flannel against the teeth. But Judith lay awake in the
night, unable to sleep for hating Celia Compton so, and would
hardly have suffered more from stabs with a knife than she did from
the recapitulation of what she called the slights put upon her by
Celia. She turned hot and cold at the recollection, and clenched
her hands while she devised sanguinary methods of getting even with
her. When the sane light of day returned, these must be dropped: for
Celia's offences were, after all, such as can hardly be visited with
vengeance; they could not even be defined. But Judith had a
companion, a poor relative whom she had taken to live with her, an
insignificant, homely, middle-aged-looking young woman called Jess,
who understood without definition, and with whom she could enlarge
upon the subject of Miss Compton without concern for being precise
as to facts or just as to assumptions,--true only to her dislike,
and correct in her sense of the dislike felt for her by Celia. It
was with this Jess she planned some of the crude impertinences by
which she endeavored to retaliate upon her enemy.

When Celia,