tive. The very girls who giggled behind "Aunt
Priscilla's" back and pitied her undesired lot were promptly and
properly aggrieved that she should prove to be so forward, so
unmaidenly. Because the right man does not happen to come into a woman's
life until so late, or because the wrong one happened in and won her
fresh young heart all too early, it results that many a better, wiser,
lovelier woman lives unmated to-day than many a woman married in her
teens. Lucky is the man the Indian summer of whose life is blessed by
the companionship of such. Minneconjou laughed at Priscilla so long as
she read to the man in hospital or the bed-ridden dames in the married
quarters; but it shied violently at her spending an hour or more each
day in reading to Dwight, even though the attendant was never away, and
Mrs. Ray, with her needlework, was often present. Was Minneconjou
already consigning the present incumbent to outer darkness and thinking
of prescribing another mate for Oswald Dwight?

Not only did Priscilla note the incessant flittings about the house, but
presently she saw that Dwight's attention was wandering. From the
adjoining room the muffled sound of voices, in petulant appeal or
expostulation, was at times distinctly audible. Felicie wished Madame to
do something, apparently, which Madame was determined not to do.

Felicie came once or twice with Madame's devoted love to ask if there
was anything Monsieur desired or lacked, and to flash guarded
malevolence at Priscilla. Felicie came again to say Madame was
recalcitrant. She feared Monsieur had not rested well _cette nuit_, and
she wished well to postpone her promenade, but the doctor he had
prescribed and Monsieur he had desired that Madame neglect no
opportunity to take the air, and would not Monsieur again conjure
Madame? Madame was deaf to these the protestations of her most devoted.
Dwight rose slowly from his reclining chair and, excusing himself to the
patient reader, was gone but a moment or two, and Madame was ravishingly
gowned and most becomingly hatted and veiled when, just for a moment, as
the day's session was closing and the fair reader about departing,
Madame rustled in to archly upbraid Monsieur for his cruelty in ordering
her to take her drive when it was impossible for him to be at her side.
"Ah, but next week--next week!"--this, doubtless, for the benefit of
Priscilla--"we shall see!"

The phaeton was at the door and Priscilla walked silently, tho