e. You do not understand her. You allow a prejudice, a
class-prejudice, to interfere with her career and the opportunity to
display her abilities. You should have trusted Mrs. Earle, Pauline, She
is my friend, and she recommended Miss Bailey because she believed in
her. It is a reflection on me and my friends to intimate that she is not
a lady."

She bent forward from the sofa with her hands clasped and her lips
tightly compressed. For a moment she gazed angrily at the bewildered
Pauline, then, as though she had suddenly bethought her of her New York
manner, she drew herself up and said with a forced laugh--"If the reason
you give were not so ridiculous, I should be seriously offended."

"Offended! Offended with Pauline," exclaimed Littleton, who entered the
room at the moment. "It cannot be that my two guardian angels have had a
falling out." He looked from one to the other brightly as if it were
really a joke.

"It is nothing," said Selma.

"It seems," said Pauline with fervor, "that I have unintentionally hurt
Selma's feelings. It is the last thing in the world I wish to do, and I
trust that when she thinks the matter over she will realize that I am
innocent. I am very, very sorry."

CHAPTER VI.

"Why don't you follow the advice of Mr. Williams and buy some shares of
stock?" asked Selma lightly, yet coaxingly, of her husband one day in
the third year of their marriage. The Williamses were dining with them
at the time, and a statement by Gregory, not altogether without motive,
as to the profits made by several people who had taken his advice,
called forth the question. He and his wife were amiably inclined toward
the Littletons, and were proud of the acquaintance. Among their other
friends they boasted of the delightful excursions into the literary
circle which the intimacy afforded them. They both would have been
pleased to see their neighbors more amply provided with money, and
Gregory, partly at the instance of Flossy, partly from sheer good-humor
in order to give a deserving but impractical fellow a chance to better
himself, threw out tips from time to time--crumbs from the rich man's
table, but bestowed in a friendly spirit. Whenever they were let fall,
Selma would look at Wilbur hoping for a sign of interest, but hitherto
they had evoked merely a smile of refusal or had been utterly ignored.

Her own question had been put on several occasions, both in the company
of the tempter and in the privacy o