back in her chair, the troubled look on her face
growing intensified. She seems glad to be silent, and with downcast eyes
plays with the gloves lying in her lap.

"Something has happened, Joyce," says her sister, going over to her.

"Something is happening always," returned Joyce, with a rather impatient
smile.

"Yes, but to you just now."

"You are sure to make me tell you sooner or later," says Miss Kavanagh,
"and even if I didn't, Tommy would. I met Mr. Dysart at that gallery
to-day."

"Felix?" says Mrs. Monkton, feeling herself an abominable hypocrite; yet
afraid to confess the truth. Something in the girl's whole attitude
forbids a confession, at this moment at all events.

"Yes."

"Well?"

"Well?"

"He was glad to see you, darling?" very tenderly.

"Was he? I don't know. He looked very ill. He said he had had a bad
cough. He is coming to see you."

"You were kind to him, Joyce?"

"I didn't personally insult him, if you mean that."

"Oh, no, I don't mean that, you know what I mean. He was ill, unhappy;
you did not make him more unhappy?"

"It is always for him!" cries the girl, with jealous anger. "Is there
never to be a thought for me? Am I nothing to you? Am I never unhappy?
Why don't you ask if he was kind to me?"

"Was he ever unkind?"

"Well, you can forget! He said dreadful things to me--dreadful. I am not
likely to forget them if you are. After all, they did not hurt you."

"Joyce!"

"Yes, I know--I know everything you would say. I am ungrateful,
abominable, but----He was unkind to me! He said what no girl would ever
forgive, and yet you have not one angry word for him."

"Never mind all that," says Mrs. Monkton, soothingly. "Tell me what you
did to-day--what you said."

"As little as possible," defiantly. "I tell you I don't want ever to see
him again, or hear of him; I think I hate him. And he looked dying." She
stops here, as if finding a difficulty about saying another word. She
coughs nervously; then, recovering herself, and as if determined to
assert herself anew and show how real is the coldness that she has
declared--"Yes, dying, I think," she says, stubbornly.

"Oh, I don't think he looked as bad as that!" says Barbara, hastily,
unthinkingly filled with grief, not only at this summary dismissal of
poor Felix from our earthly sphere, but for her sister's unhappiness,
which is as plain to her as though no little comedy had been performed
for the concealment of it.

"You