varieties of noses. Francine's method had its tranquilizing effect
on Emily. She answered indulgently, "Miss de Sor, I have nothing to do
with it."

"Nothing to do with it? No prizes to win before you leave school?"

"I won all the prizes years ago."

"But there are recitations. Surely you recite?"

Harmless words in themselves, pursuing the same smooth course of
flattery as before--but with what a different result! Emily's face
reddened with anger the moment they were spoken. Having already
irritated Alban Morris, unlucky Francine, by a second mischievous
interposition of accident, had succeeded in making Emily smart next.
"Who has told you," she burst out; "I insist on knowing!"

"Nobody has told me anything!" Francine declared piteously.

"Nobody has told you how I have been insulted?"

"No, indeed! Oh, Miss Brown, who could insult _you?_"

In a man, the sense of injury does sometimes submit to the discipline of
silence. In a woman--never. Suddenly reminded of her past wrongs (by
the pardonable error of a polite schoolfellow), Emily committed the
startling inconsistency of appealing to the sympathies of Francine!

"Would you believe it? I have been forbidden to recite--I, the head girl
of the school. Oh, not to-day! It happened a month ago--when we were all
in consultation, making our arrangements. Miss Ladd asked me if I had
decided on a piece to recite. I said, 'I have not only decided, I have
learned the piece.' 'And what may it be?' 'The dagger-scene in Macbeth.'
There was a howl--I can call it by no other name--a howl of indignation.
A man's soliloquy, and, worse still, a murdering man's soliloquy,
recited by one of Miss Ladd's young ladies, before an audience of
parents and guardians! That was the tone they took with me. I was as
firm as a rock. The dagger-scene or nothing. The result is--nothing! An
insult to Shakespeare, and an insult to Me. I felt it--I feel it still.
I was prepared for any sacrifice in the cause of the drama. If Miss Ladd
had met me in a proper spirit, do you know what I would have done?
I would have played Macbeth in costume. Just hear me, and judge for
yourself. I begin with a dreadful vacancy in my eyes, and a hollow
moaning in my voice: 'Is this a dagger that I see before me--?'"

Reciting with her face toward the trees, Emily started, dropped the
character of Macbeth, and instantly became herself again: herself, with
a rising color and an angry brightening of the eyes. "Excu