he farthest, bluest reaches of her heaven, and henceforth she
was quite content to relapse into the utter commonplaces of the hive.
Her yellow hair grew sparse and flat and streaked with gray, her
pink-rose face became over plump and mottled across the nose, and her
mind turned soon as flat and unelastic as her body; but she was
perfectly satisfied with the portion she had had from life, for, having
weighed all things, she had come to regard the conventions as of most
enduring worth.

Now she rustled in with an emphatic announcement of stiff brocade, and
enveloped the spectral Angela in an embrace of comfortable arms and
bosom. Her unwieldy figure reminded Laura of a broad, low wall that has
been freshly papered in a large flowered pattern. On her hands and bosom
a number of fine emeralds flashed, for events had shown in the end that
the impecunious young lover was not fated to dabble in stocks in vain.

"Oh Angela, my poor dear, how are you?" she enquired.

Angela released herself with a shrinking gesture and, turning away, sat
down at the foot of the long couch. "I am the same--always the same,"
she answered in her cold, reserved voice.

"You took your fresh air to-day, I hope?"

"I went down in the yard as usual. Laura," she looked desperately
around, "is that Rosa who has just come in?" As she paused a knock came
at the door, and Laura opened it to admit Mrs. Payne--the eldest, the
richest and the most eccentric of the sisters.

From a long and varied association with men and manners Mrs. Payne had
gathered a certain halo of experience, as of one who had ripened from
mere acquaintance into a degree of positive intimacy with the world. She
had seen it up and down from all sides, had turned it critically about
for her half-humorous, half-sentimental inspection, and the frank
cynicism which now flavoured her candid criticism of life only added the
spice of personality to her original distinction of adventure. As the
wife of an Ambassador to France in the time of the gay Eugenie, and
again as one of the diplomatic circle in Cairo and in Constantinople,
she had stored her mind with precious anecdotes much as a squirrel
stores a hollow in his tree with nuts. Life had taught her that the one
infallible method for impressing your generation is to impress it by a
difference, and, beginning as a variation from type, she had ended by
commanding attention as a preserved specimen of an extinct species.
Long, wiry, animated