na's cheek was
reflected from the same fire which had scorched her own.

So they drifted on through the sultry weeks of July. At that season the
business of the little shop almost ceased, and one Saturday morning Mr.
Ramy proposed that the sisters should lock up early and go with him for
a sail down the bay in one of the Coney Island boats.

Ann Eliza saw the light in Evelina's eye and her resolve was instantly
taken.

"I guess I won't go, thank you kindly; but I'm sure my sister will be
happy to."

She was pained by the perfunctory phrase with which Evelina urged her to
accompany them; and still more by Mr. Ramy's silence.

"No, I guess I won't go," she repeated, rather in answer to herself than
to them. "It's dreadfully hot and I've got a kinder headache."

"Oh, well, I wouldn't then," said her sister hurriedly. "You'd better
jest set here quietly and rest."

*** A summary of Part I of "Bunner Sisters" appears on page 4 of the
advertising pages.

"Yes, I'll rest," Ann Eliza assented.

At two o'clock Mr. Ramy returned, and a moment later he and Evelina left
the shop. Evelina had made herself another new bonnet for the occasion,
a bonnet, Ann Eliza thought, almost too youthful in shape and colour.
It was the first time it had ever occurred to her to criticize Evelina's
taste, and she was frightened at the insidious change in her attitude
toward her sister.

When Ann Eliza, in later days, looked back on that afternoon she felt
that there had been something prophetic in the quality of its solitude;
it seemed to distill the triple essence of loneliness in which all her
after-life was to be lived. No purchasers came; not a hand fell on
the door-latch; and the tick of the clock in the back room ironically
emphasized the passing of the empty hours.

Evelina returned late and alone. Ann Eliza felt the coming crisis in the
sound of her footstep, which wavered along as if not knowing on what it
trod. The elder sister's affection had so passionately projected itself
into her junior's fate that at such moments she seemed to be living
two lives, her own and Evelina's; and her private longings shrank into
silence at the sight of the other's hungry bliss. But it was evident
that Evelina, never acutely alive to the emotional atmosphere about her,
had no idea that her secret was suspected; and with an assumption of
unconcern that would have made Ann Eliza smile if the pang had been less
piercing, the younger sister pr