ouch of lawlessness in its audacity; her wealth,
her power over her father, her ascendency over the imaginations of the
plain villagers. It was finally felt that she believed everything
permitted to her, and an occasional exaggeration in hard, hare-brained
boldness made a beginning of division in opinion about her among those
whom her generosity and good-humor had first made all alike her
adherents. From time to time inevitably the rivals crossed each
other's path, when Celia's superiority was confirmed to her by the
cold freedom of mind she could maintain under the test, while Judith's
tortures were manifest in the loud fool she made of herself, with the
cheap drama of her flashing eye and imperial attitudes.

Thus, while weeks grew to months and months to years, under the genial
light of day and the beauty of the nights, amid innocent occupations
and simple pleasures and natural relations satisfying to the heart,
the two carried about, with as little fear as if it had been some such
thing as Judith's diminutive pet alligator brought home from the
South, or the diamond snake with which Celia fastened her lace, the
sentiment destined to find its termination in such tragic horror.

II

Celia, after a round of visits, had come late this year to their
country-house. Miss Greene, called in to make shorter a walking-skirt
for country rambles, as she stitched, told the news, according to
her wont. She had discovered that she was more acceptable to
Celia when she left the Brays out of her conversation, just as she
was more acceptable to Judith when she turned it upon the Comptons.
As this diminished her immediate store of topics while at the
Comptons--village doings were so inwoven with the Brays' affairs--Miss
Greene felt obliged to extend the radius which her reports took in.

"You ever drive over Quarryville way these days?" After an interval of
silence, long for her, she thus started a new subject.

"I haven't driven there for a long time. Do you think it a pretty
road? I have never cared for it."

"No, no more do I. It ain't tree-sy, nor yet there ain't nothin' much
to see of any sort. But Miss Goodrich she drove over there this summer
early, she's got a relative livin' over there, and--Did you ever
notice between this and there a little tumble-down farm-house jest a
little mite off the road? I don't believe there's more'n half a dozen
houses between here and Quarryville, so you must have seen it, though
perhaps