he went by her and into his room.

CHAPTER XIV

On the memorable night of her first grand opera Norma and Chris dined at
Mrs. von Behrens's. It was Alice who urged the arrangement, urged it
quite innocently, as she frequently did the accidental pairing of Norma
and Chris, because her mother was going for a week to Boston, the
following day, and they wanted an evening of comfortable talk together.

Norma, with Freda and Miss Slater as excited accomplices, laid out the
new corn-coloured gown at about five o'clock in the afternoon, laid
beside it the stockings and slippers that exactly matched it in colour,
and hung over the foot of her bed the embroidered little stays that were
so ridiculously small and so unnecessarily beautiful. On a separate
chair was spread the big furred wrap of gold and brown brocade, the high
carriage shoes, and the long white gloves to which the tissue paper
still was clinging. The orchids that Annie had given Norma that morning
were standing in a slender vase on the bureau, and as a final touch the
girl, regarding these preparations with a sort of enchanted delight,
unfurled to its full glory the great black ostrich-feather fan. Norma
amused Alice and Mrs. Melrose by refusing tea, and disappeared long
before there was need, to begin the great ceremony of robing.

Miss Slater manicured her hands while Freda brushed and dressed the dark
thick hair. Between Norma and the nurse there had at first been no
special liking. Both were naturally candidates for Alice's favour. But
as the months went by, and Norma began to realize that Miss Slater's
position was not only far from the ideally beautiful one it had seemed
at first, but that the homely, elderly, good-natured woman was actually
putting herself to some pains to make Norma's own life in the Liggett
house more comfortable than it might have been, she had come genuinely
to admire Alice's attendant, and now they were fast friends. It was
often in Norma's power to distract Alice's attention from the fact that
Miss Slater was a little late in returning from her walk, or she would
make it a point to order for the invalid something that Miss Slater had
forgotten. They stood firmly together in many a small domestic
emergency, and although the nurse's presence to-night was not, as Norma
thought with a little pang, like having Rose or Aunt Kate with her,
still it was much, much better than having no one at all.

She sat wrapped luxuriously in a b