hairdresser in
Worcester. It's simplicity itself. Do let me show you!" Quickly going
over, she removed the kingfisher-blue fillet, and making certain passes
with her fingers through the hair, murmured:

"It's so beautifully fine; it seems such a pity not to show it all,
dear. Now look at yourself!" And from the recesses of her pocket she
produced a little mirror. "I'm sure Tod will simply love it like that.
It'll be such a nice change for him."

Kirsteen, with just a faint wrinkling of her lips and eyebrows, waited
till she had finished. Then she said:

"Yes, Mother, dear, I'm sure he will," and replaced the fillet. A
patient, half-sad, half-quizzical smile visited Frances Freeland's lips,
as who should say: 'Yes, I know you think that I'm a fuss-box, but it
really is a pity that you wear it so, darling!'

At sight of that smile, Kirsteen got up and kissed her gravely on the
forehead.

When Nedda came back from a fruitless search for Tod, her bag was
already in the little spare bedroom and Frances Freeland gone. The
girl had never yet been alone with her aunt, for whom she had a fervent
admiration not unmixed with awe. She idealized her, of course, thinking
of her as one might think of a picture or statue, a symbolic figure,
standing for liberty and justice and the redress of wrong. Her
never-varying garb of blue assisted the girl's fancy, for blue was
always the color of ideals and aspiration--was not blue sky the nearest
one could get to heaven--were not blue violets the flowers of spring?
Then, too, Kirsteen was a woman with whom it would be quite impossible
to gossip or small-talk; with her one could but simply and directly say
what one felt, and only that over things which really mattered. And this
seemed to Nedda so splendid that it sufficed in itself to prevent the
girl from saying anything whatever. She longed to, all the same, feeling
that to be closer to her aunt meant to be closer to Derek. Yet, with
all, she knew that her own nature was very different; this, perhaps,
egged her on, and made her aunt seem all the more exciting. She waited
breathless till Kirsteen said:

"Yes, you and Derek must know each other better. The worst kind of
prison in the world is a mistaken marriage."

Nedda nodded fervently. "It must be. But I think one knows, Aunt
Kirsteen!"

She felt as if she were being searched right down to the soul before the
answer came:

"Perhaps. I knew myself. I have seen others who did--a fe