Sin Saxon; but she had simply
told the truth in her wayward way that morning. Miss Craydocke had done
it, with her kindly patience that was no stupidity, her simple dignity
that never lowered itself and that therefore could not be lowered, and
her quiet continuance in generous well-doing,--and Sin Saxon was
different. She was won to a perception of the really best in life,--that
which this plain old spinster, with her "scrap of lace and a front," had
found worth living for after the golden days were over. The impulse of
temperament, and the generosity which made everything instant and entire
with her, acted in this also, and carried her full over to an enthusiasm
of affectionate cooeperation.

There were a few people at Outledge--of the sort who, having once made
up their minds that no good is ever to come out of Nazareth, see all
things in the light of that conviction--who would not allow the praise
of any voluntary amendment to this tempering and new direction of Sin's
vivacity. "It was time she was put down," they said, "and they were glad
that it was done. That last outbreak had finished her. She might as well
run after people now whom she had never noticed before; it was plain
there was nothing else left for her; her place was gone, and her reign
was over." Of all others, Mrs. Thoresby insisted upon this most
strongly.

The whole school-party had considerably subsided. Madam Routh held a
tighter rein; but that Sin Saxon had a place and a power still, she
found ways to show in a new spirit. Into a quiet corner of the
dancing-hall, skimming her way, with the dance yet in her feet, between
groups of staid observers, she came straight, one evening, from a
bright, spirited figure of the German, and stretched her hand to Martha
Josselyn. "It's in your eyes," she whispered,--"come!"

Night after night Martha Josselyn had sat there with the waltz-music in
her ears, and her little feet, that had had one merry winter's training
before the war, and many a home practice since with the younger ones,
quivering to the time beneath her robes, and seen other girls chosen out
and led away,--young matrons, and little short-petticoated children
even, taken to "excursionize" between the figures,--while nobody thought
of her. "I might be ninety, or a cripple," she said to her sister, "from
their taking for granted it is nothing to me. How is it that everything
goes by, and I only twenty?" There had been danger that Martha
Josselyn's