all, of course!" The first chill of suspicion that I had
been cast for the part of Cinderella crept through me, like a
caterpillar walking inside my spine.

"But, my _child_!" Di exclaimed. "You couldn't have thought you were
going? Officially you are a little girl. You don't exist, and if you
did, you haven't a dress----"

"I have a dress. The one I bought with the money from the lace. I didn't
say much, because I thought it would be fun to surprise you."

"Well, I'm awfully sorry, dear, that you've been counting on it. I never
dreamed--you ought to have told me----"

"You said you'd accept for '_us_.'"

"I meant Father and me. It never crossed my mind that you----Too bad!
But anyhow, it's too late now. Father would never consent."

I might have retorted that she was the one person in the world who could
make him consent to anything she wanted, but then, the truth was that
she didn't want this thing. Diana had--and has--the manners of an angel;
and strangers would think she was as easy to melt as sugar in the sun.
But I, who have lived with her all the years of my life, know that the
sugar is only on the surface. And I have learned what is underneath.
Even then, I realized that Di had understood perfectly well from the
first that I expected to go to the ball, and she had kept quiet in order
to have no more than one short, sharp fuss at the end. While it was
being borne in upon me that I was to stop at home, instead of going on
arguing and "fishwifing" I shut up like a clam. I suppose it was a kind
of obstinate pride, the sort of pride that makes condemned people not
scream or throw themselves about on the way to execution. But when
Father and Di had gone, I cried--oh, how I cried! There was a kind of
wild pleasure in letting the sobs come, and feeling the hot tears spout
out of my eyes. In any clash between us, Di always won, because she was
"grown up," and I was a "little girl"; but the trick she had played on
me this time roused my sense of its injustice, and with all my body and
mind and soul I resolved to strengthen my soul against her. "Some day,"
I said to myself, letting the tears dry on my cheeks as I listened to a
spirit of prophecy, "some day there'll be a battle for life or death
between our characters, Di's and mine, and I'll save myself up to win
_then_."

It seemed weak, as if I were a whipped child, to creep off to bed, yet I
couldn't force myself to read, or do anything to turn my thoughts from