d caught something of the sharp, harassed spirit
too. But Theo had an odd secret sympathy for Pamela, though her sister
never suspected it. Pamela had a love-story, and in Theo's eyes this one
touch of forlorn romance was the silver lining to many clouds. Ten years
ago, when Pamela had been a pretty girl, she had had a lover--poor
Arthur Brunwalde--Theo always mentally designated him; and only a week
before her wedding-day, death had ended her love-story forever. Poor
Pamela! was Theo's thought: to have loved like Jane Eyre, and Agnes
Wickfield, and Lord Bacon, and to have been so near release from the
bread-and-butter cutting, and squabbling, and then to have lost all.
Poor Pamela, indeed! So the lovely, impulsive, romance-loving younger
sister cherished an odd interest in Pamela's thin, sharp face, and
unsympathizing voice, and in picturing the sad romance of her youth, was
always secretly regardful of the past in her trials of the present.

As she turned over the socks in the basket, she glanced up now and then
at Pamela's face, which was bent over her work. It had been a pretty
face, but now there were faint lines upon it here and there; the
features once delicate were sharpened, the blue eyes were faded, and the
blonde hair faded also. It was a face whose youth had been its beauty,
and its youth had fled with Pamela North's happiness. Her life had ended
in its prime; nay, not ended, for the completion had never come--it was
to be a work unfinished till its close. Poor Arthur Brunwalde!

A few more silent stitches, and then the work slipped from Theo's
fingers into her lap, and she lifted her big, inconsistent eyes again.

"Pam," she said, "were you ever at Lady Throckmorton's?"

A faint color showed itself on Pamela's faded face.

"Yes," she answered, sharply, "I was once. What nonsense is running in
your mind now, for goodness sake?"

Theo flushed up to her forehead, no half flush; she actually glowed all
over, her eyes catching a light where her delicate dark skin caught the
dusky red.

"Don't be cross, Pam," she said, appealingly. "I can't help it. The
letter she sent to mamma made me think of it. Oh, Pam! if I could only
have accepted the invitation."

"But you can't," said Pam, concisely. "So you may as well let the matter
rest."

"I know I can't," Theo returned, her quaint resignation telling its own
story of previous disappointments. "I have nothing to wear, you know,
and, of course, I couldn't go