g in concert with her, "I don't think I'd recognize it if I saw
it."--"Through whose fault, I'd like to know?"--her voice topped her
husband's.

"Please!" A changed Sue was speaking now, not playfully or
facetiously, or even patiently: her face was grave, her eyes were
angry. "Mrs. Balcome, kindly take your place in the Close, to the left
of the big door. Mr. Balcome, you will follow the choir." She waved
them out, and they went, both unaccountably meek. Those who knew Sue
Milo seldom saw this phase of her personality. Sue, the yielding, the
loving, the childlike, could, on occasions, shed all her softer
qualities and become, of a sudden, justly vengeful, full of wrath, and
unbending. Even her mother had, at rare intervals, seen this
phenomenon, and felt respect for it.

Just now, having opened the passage door for the choir, Mrs. Milo had
scented something wrong, and was cautioning the boys in a whisper.
They came by twos across the room, curving their line a little to pass
near to Sue, and looking toward her with troubled eyes. This indeed
was a different Sue, in that strange dress, standing so tensely, with
averted face.

When the last white gown was gone, Hattie laid her hand on Sue's arm.
"It's all right," she said gently. "Don't you care."

Sue did not speak or move.

"Dear Sue," pleaded the girl.

Sue turned. In her look was pity for all that Hattie had borne of
bitterness and wrangling. And as a mother gathers a stricken child to
her breast, so she drew the other to her. "Oh, Hattie!" she murmured
huskily. "Go--go far. Put it all behind you forever! From now on,
Hattie, they can't hurt you any more--can't torture you any longer.
From now on, happiness, Hattie, happiness!" She dropped her head to
Hattie's shoulder.

"There! There!" soothed the younger woman, tenderly. Someone was
entering--a girl with a music-roll under an arm. Nodding to the
newcomer, she covered the situation by ostentatiously tidying Sue's
hair.

CHAPTER III

"Dear Miss Crosby, I'm so glad to see you again!"

Mrs. Milo came hurrying across the drawing-room to greet the soloist.

Miss Crosby shook hands heartily. She was smartly dressed in a
wine-colored velveteen, the over-short skirt of which barely reached to
the tops of her freshly whitened spats. Her wide hat was tipped to a
rakish angle. She was young (twenty-eight or thirty at most, but she
looked less) and distinctly pretty. Her features were