and charm, had
by a stroke of the wand become metamorphosed into a remarkably
attractive young woman. It was startling: but it was also undeniable. It
was not the vernal frock, of that Cleopatra was convinced; although Mrs.
Delarayne had concentrated chiefly upon this feature in her transports
of joy over her younger daughter's dramatic and spontaneous assumption
of womanly beauty. Had it been only the frock Cleopatra was intelligent
enough to have known that the pang she had felt would have been left
unexplained. No, it was more fundamental than that. All the dress had
accomplished was to set an acute accent over a development which, though
already at its penultimate stage, had so far escaped the notice of
Cleopatra and her mother. The picture had been present the day before,
but it had not been quite perfectly focussed. The new frock had focussed
it sharply.

Cleopatra remembered having asked herself whether Leonetta could be
aware of the change that had come over her. But plainly her behaviour
had dispelled this suspicion. Leonetta had behaved on that memorable
occasion exactly as she had done throughout the previous week. Not even
a sign of enhanced self-possession or assurance had betrayed the fact of
an inward change, and somehow this unconsciousness of her accession of
power only seemed to Cleopatra to make that power more formidable.

Events followed rapidly one upon the other after that. Everybody noticed
the change and the improvement. Everybody commented on it. Mrs.
Delarayne was doubly rejoiced, because although both her daughters were
beautiful, Leonetta's features and style were more her mother's than
Cleopatra's were. Cleopatra was a Delarayne, her beauty was if anything
more severe and more stately than her mother's. Now the resemblance
between Leonetta and her mother had become striking. But strangers were
little occupied with this aspect of Leonetta's beauty. And when
Cleopatra observed that the attention of men, in and out of doors, had
become more marked towards her sister, and that they had begun even to
turn round to stare at her in the street, the elder girl knew that her
vision on that unforgettable spring morning had not been an
hallucination: on the contrary it was a fact, and one to which she must
do her best to reconcile herself.

Gradually the consequences of the change were forced upon the
consciousness of Leonetta herself and her manner became correspondingly
modified. Leonetta knew tha