up, the woman's face looking
down, both smiling.

And Mary's heart drew itself together in her breast. Through her shut
lips her sister's name forced itself almost audibly.

"_Gwen_-da!"

* * * * *

Suddenly she shivered. A cold wind blew through the open window. Yet
she did not move to shut it out. To have interfered with the attic
window would have been a breach of compact, an unholy invasion of her
sister's rights. For the attic, the smallest, the coldest, the
darkest and most thoroughly uncomfortable room in the whole house,
was Gwenda's, made over to her in the Vicar's magnanimity, by way of
compensation for the necessity that forced her to share her room with
Alice. As the attic was used for storing trunks and lumber, only two
square yards of floor could be spared for Gwenda. But the two square
yards, cleared, and covered with a strip of old carpet, and furnished
with a little table and one chair; the wall-space by the window with
its hanging bookcase; the window itself and the corner fireplace near
it were hers beyond division and dispute. Nobody wanted them.

And as Mary from among the boxes looked toward her sister's territory,
her small, brooding face took on such sadness as good women feel in
contemplating a character inscrutable and unlike their own. Mary was
sorry for Gwenda because of her inscrutability and unlikeness.

Then, thinking of Gwenda, Mary smiled. The smile began in pity for her
sister and ended in a nameless, secret satisfaction. Not for a moment
did Mary suspect its source. It seemed to her one with her sense of
her own goodness.

When she smiled it was as if the spirit of her small brooding face
took wings and fluttered, lifting delicately the rather heavy corners
of her mouth and eyes.

Then, quietly, and with no indecorous haste, she went down into the
drawing-room to receive Rowcliffe. She was the eldest and it was her
duty.

By the mercy of Heaven the Vicar had gone out.

* * * * *

Gwenda left Rowcliffe with Mary and went upstairs to prepare Alice for
his visit. She had brushed out her sister's long pale hair and platted
it, and had arranged the plats, tied with knots of white ribbon, one
over each low breast, and she had helped her to put on a little white
flannel jacket with a broad lace collar. Thus arrayed and decorated,
Alice sat up in her bed, her small slender body supported by huge
pillows, white against