p. That
life, and then her sudden liberty, have made her independent and
advanced, but I can't say that I like it myself. I wish she were more
like Anabel. It's odd they're not more alike, being such friends."

"I quite agree with Minerva!" announced the leader. "Isabel ought to
have a chaperon. I don't doubt she's all she should be or _I_ shouldn't
be here to-night, friend of her mother's or not; but I suggested to her
only yesterday--I had a little talk with her on Main Street--that she
get some respectable old maid or widow to live with her."

"What did she say?" asked Mrs. Colton, with a smile.

"Say? The insolent young minx! She just looked at me, through me--Me--as
if I had not spoken. Her mother always put on airs. That's where she
gets it from. I had half a mind not to come to-night. But I wanted to
see things for myself. If she does anything really imprudent, _I'll make
her suffer_."

This last phrase was famous in Rosewater. Mrs. Wheaton employed it
seldom, but when she did her friends understood that she was not far
from the war-path. Her color had risen with the memory of yesterday's
grievance, pushed aside by curiosity for some twenty-eight hours.

Mrs. Haight regarded the radiant young hostess with a malignant stare,
prudently veiled by drooping lids. She envied Isabel with her whole
small soul; she had never known the sensation of liberty in her life,
and she stopped short of the courage that might snatch it. Mr. Haight,
the leading druggist of Rosewater and an eminent and useful citizen, was
a large stolid elderly man--he was at present in the little dining-room
with other gentlemen of his standing and a punch-bowl--as regular as a
clock in his habits, and devoted conscientiously to his wife, whom he
took for a buggy ride every Sunday in fine weather. They had been
married for twenty-two years, and for at least fifteen she had yearned
to be the heroine of an illicit romance; nor ever yet had found the
courage to indulge in a mild flirtation. She really loved her husband,
and in many respects made him an excellent wife, but her depths were
choked with the slime of a morbid eroticism which her husband was the
last man to exorcise. The earlier fever in her blood had gradually
dropped to the greensickness of middle-age, so that she was vaguely
repellent to men, particularly the young. This she had the wit to
detect, as well as the incontrovertible fact that her youth and her
chances were gone. As a natu