tty over a jest?"

"I'm not like-you," said Janet.

"I was only kiddin', I tell you," insisted Lise, with a hat pin in her
mouth. "Forget it."

When Lise had gone out Janet sat down in the rocking-chair and began to
rock agitatedly. What had really made her angry, she began to perceive,
was the realization of a certain amount of truth in her sister's
intimation concerning Ditmar. Why should she have, in Lise, continually
before her eyes a degraded caricature of her own aspirations and ideals?
or was Lise a mirror--somewhat tarnished, indeed--in which she read the
truth about herself? For some time Janet had more than suspected that her
sister possessed a new lover--a lover whom she refrained from discussing;
an ominous sign, since it had been her habit to dangle her conquests
before Janet's eyes, to discuss their merits and demerits with an
engaging though cynical freedom. Although the existence of this gentleman
was based on evidence purely circumstantial, Janet was inclined to
believe him of a type wholly different from his predecessors; and the
fact that his attentions were curiously intermittent and irregular
inclined her to the theory that he was not a resident of Hampton. What
was he like? It revolted her to reflect that he might in some ways
possibly resemble Ditmar. Thus he became the object of a morbid
speculation, especially at such times as this, when Lise attired herself
in her new winter finery and went forth to meet him. Janet, also, had
recently been self-convicted of sharing with Lise the same questionable
tendency toward self-adornment to please the eye of man. The very next
Saturday night after she had indulged in that mad extravagance of the
blue suit, Lise had brought home from the window of The Paris in Faber
Street a hat that had excited the cupidity and admiration of Miss Schuler
and herself, and in front of which they had stood languishing on three
successive evenings. In its acquisition Lise had expended almost the
whole of a week's salary. Its colour was purple, on three sides were
massed drooping lilac feathers, but over the left ear the wide brim was
caught up and held by a crescent of brilliant paste stones. Shortly after
this purchase--the next week, in fact,--The Paris had alluringly and
craftily displayed, for the tempting sum of $6.29, the very cloak
ordained by providence to "go" with the hat. Miss Schuler declared it
would be a crime to fail to take advantage of such an opportunity b