she had fallen from a higher rank, for with women
there is no inherited distinction of higher and lower. Their beauty,
their grace, and their natural charm fill the place of birth and family.
Natural delicacy, instinctive elegance, a lively wit, are the ruling
forces in the social realm, and these make the daughters of the common
people the equals of the finest ladies.

She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for all the refinements and
luxuries of life. She suffered from the poverty of her home as she
looked at the dirty walls, the worn-out chairs, the ugly curtains. All
those things of which another woman of her station would have been quite
unconscious tortured her and made her indignant. The sight of the
country girl who was maid-of-all-work in her humble household filled her
almost with desperation. She dreamed of echoing halls hung with Oriental
draperies and lighted by tall bronze candelabra, while two tall footmen
in knee-breeches drowsed in great armchairs by reason of the heating
stove's oppressive warmth. She dreamed of splendid parlors furnished in
rare old silks, of carved cabinets loaded with priceless bric-a-brac,
and of entrancing little boudoirs just right for afternoon chats with
bosom friends--men famous and sought after, the envy and the desire of
all the other women.

When she sat down to dinner at a little table covered with a cloth three
days old, and looked across at her husband as he uncovered the soup and
exclaimed with an air of rapture, "Oh, the delicious stew! I know
nothing better than that," she dreamed of dainty dinners, of shining
silverware, of tapestries which peopled the walls with antique figures
and strange birds in fairy forests; she dreamed of delicious viands
served in wonderful dishes, of whispered gallantries heard with a
sphinx-like smile as you eat the pink flesh of a trout or the wing of a
quail.

She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing; and she loved nothing else. She
felt made for that alone. She was filled with a desire to please, to be
envied, to be bewitching and sought after. She had a rich friend, a
former schoolmate at the convent, whom she no longer wished to visit
because she suffered so much when she came home. For whole days at a
time she wept without ceasing in bitterness and hopeless misery.

Now, one evening her husband came home with a triumphant air, holding in
his hand a large envelope.

"There," said he, "there is something for you."

She quickl