are you going to do?" she
asked. "May I come and sit with you till dinner?"

"I have accounts to look over; I shouldn't be much of a companion."

"Always something."

"Yes, always something."

"Well, I shall come, all the same."

An hour later she entered Margaret's room, selected a low chair which
she liked, and seated herself. This apartment of Margaret's, which was
called her dressing-room, though in reality she never dressed there,
contained her own small library, her writing-table, the rows of
account-books (with which she was at present engaged), and sewing
materials--all articles which Garda declared she detested. "It looks
like an industrial school," she said; "you only need shoe-brushes."

"Why shoe-brushes?" Mrs. Harold had inquired.

"They always make them--in industrial schools," Garda had responded,
imaginatively.

The mistress of the house had not lifted her head when Garda entered,
she went on with her accounts. Garda had apparently lost nothing of her
old capacity for motionless serenity; leaning back in her chair, she
swayed a feather fan slowly to and fro, looking at the top of a
palmetto, which she could see through the open window, shooting up
against the blue; her beauty was greater than ever, her eyes were
sweeter in expression, her girlish figure was now more womanly. After
musing in this contented silence for half an hour, she fell asleep.

Some minutes later, Margaret, missing the soft motion of the fan, looked
up; she smiled when she saw the sleeping figure. It was a warm day,
Garda had changed her thin black dress for a white one; through the
lace, of which it was principally composed, her round arms gleamed. She
had dropped her fan; her head, with the thick braids of hair wound
closely about it, drooped to one side like a flower.

Margaret had smiled to see how easily, as a child does, she had glided
into unconsciousness. But the next moment the smile was followed by a
heavy sigh. It was a sigh of envy, the page of figures grew dim, then
faded from before her eyes, she dropped her head upon her clasped hands
in the abandonment of the fresh, the ever-fresh realization of her own
dreariness. This realization was never long absent; she might hope that
she had forgotten it, or that it had forgotten her; but it always came
back.

It happened that at this instant Garda woke; and saw the movement. She
came swiftly across to her friend. "Oh, I knew you were unhappy, though
you never, n