voice from a
sad-faced woman, clad in the sable robes of mourning. It was that
"distant branch of the family," none other than Mrs. Crane's own widowed
sister, for whom the patriotic contractor had so generously provided
with a home, and one dollar fifty per week. Tears were falling upon the
work before her, but she brushed them away quietly as a shrill voice
beside her cried,

"Blubbering again, Jane Phelps, and Lucinda's new pearl-colored silk,
that I paid five dollars a yard for, in your lap. You miserable,
ill-tempered, sulky thing; if you have soiled it, I'll make you starve
it out, and take it out of your wages, beside!"

"You could not make me suffer more, whatever you might do, for I am the
most wretched, pitiable creature in existence," sobbed the woman.

"Good enough for you," was the response; "'as you make your bed, so you
must lie.' I always knew, for all your pretty, pink and white face, and
meek ways, you'd come to grief. You could always fool everybody but me,
though mother's pet, must have the best of everything to show off her
good looks, and no matter what fell to my share. I was so homely and
unattractive it did not make any difference what I wore. But the tables
are turned now, eh, Jane! The old folks didn't know, when they thought
they'd made you for this world and the next, by putting you ahead of me,
and sounding your praises in the ear of that white-faced artist, that
he'd die and leave their darling with nothing but a lot of unsalable,
miserable pictures and a child to support! They didn't live to see it,
to be sure, but _I_ did, and, Jane, (coming closer and lowering her
voice to a tone of deep, intense passion,) I glory in my revenge. I'm
the rich Mrs. Crane, to-day, and you are old and poor, and faded, and I
don't mind telling you, now that this is an hour that I've longed to
see. You have always been preferred before me, and as I've had to take
up with the refuse, it was no more than natural, I suppose, (with a
sneering laugh,) that I should wait, and long, and hunger, for the love
that you took only as your right. So I waited, and to-day I triumph in
the thought that Deane Phelps' petted wife is a dependent upon _my_
bounty, a menial in the house where _I_ reign supreme, and which knows
no law but _my_ will. I have forgotten how to love, but each day (and I
have conned the lesson well) I learn better how to _hate_."

There was a rustling of stiff silk, a door slammed angrily, and the