ll. How
straight she is! No stoop about her."

Maria was, in fact, carrying herself with an extreme straightness
both of body and soul. She was conscious to the full of her own
beauty in her new suit, and of the loveliness of her little sister in
her white fur nest of a sledge. She was inordinately proud. She had
asked Ida if she might take the child for a little airing before the
early Sunday dinner, and Ida had consented easily.

Ida also wished for an opportunity to talk with Harry about her
cherished scheme, and preferred doing so when Maria was not in the
house. For manifest reasons, too, Sunday was the best day on which to
approach her husband on a subject which she realized was a somewhat
delicate one. She was not so sure of his subservience when Maria was
concerned, as in everything else, and Sunday was the day when his
nerves were less strained, when he had risen late. Ida did not insist
upon his going to church, as his first wife had done. In fact, if the
truth was told, Harry wore his last winter's overcoat this year, and
she was a little doubtful about its appearance in conjunction with
her new velvet costume. He sat in the parlor when Ida entered after
Maria had gone out with Evelyn. Harry looked at her admiringly.

"How stunning you do look in that velvet dress!" he said.

Ida laughed consciously. "I rather like it myself," said she. "It's a
great deal handsomer than Mrs. George Henderson's, and I know she had
hers made at a Fifth Avenue tailor's, and it must have cost twice as
much."

Ida had filled Harry with the utmost faith in her financial
management. While he was spending more than he had ever done, and
working harder, he was innocently unconscious of it. He felt a sense
of gratitude and wonder that Ida was such a good manager and
accomplished such great results with such a small expenditure. He was
unwittingly disloyal to his first wife. He remembered the rigid
economy under her sway, and owned to himself, although with
remorseful tenderness, that she had not been such a financier as this
woman. "You ought to go on Wall Street," he often told Ida. He gazed
after her now with a species of awe that he had such a splendid,
masterful creature for his wife, as she moved with the slow majesty
habitual to her out of the room, the black plumes on her hat softly
floating, the rich draperies of her gown trailing in sumptuous folds
of darkness.

When she came down again, in a rose-colored silk tea-gown