the parlor the murmur of voices--Mr.
Falconer's and Gertrude's. They were low and deep: the topic between
them was evidently no light one. While she listened her imagination
was busy concerning their subject, their attitudes, their looks, and
even their words. And every imagining was such a pain that she tried
to close her ear against their voices. Then she went to her mother's
room. Here, being forced to reply to commonplaces when all her thought
was strained to the parlor, she was soon driven back to her own
chamber. She turned the gas low and lay on a lounge, her face buried
in the cushion, abandoned to a wrecked feeling.

After a time she heard some one enter her room. She sat up, and saw
Gertrude standing beside her, the gas turned high. She wished her
sister would go away: she hated the sight of that beautiful, glad
face. She turned her eyes away from it, and then, ashamed to begrudge
the young thing her happiness, she lifted her stained lids, to
Gertrude's face and smiled all she possibly could. She tried in that
moment to feel glad that the disappointment and grief had come to
her instead of Gertrude. Her heart was inured to a hard lot, but
Gertrude's had always been sheltered. It would be a pity to have it
turned out into the cold: her own had long been used to chill and to
hunger.

"Susie, won't you go with us sleigh-riding to-morrow evening?"
Gertrude asked. "Mr. Falconer and I have planned a sleighing-party for
to-morrow evening. They say the sleighing is perfectly superb."

"Is that what you've been doing?" Susan asked, feeling somehow that
there would be a relief in hearing that it was all.

"That's a part of what we've been doing." A rosy glow came into
Gertrude's cheek, and the old mean, jealous feeling came back into
Susan's heart. "Mr. Falconer wants you to go," said Gertrude.

"He does not," Susan returned in a fierce tone. She was forgetting
herself: her heart was giddy and blind with the sudden wave of
bitterness that came pouring over it. "He wants you: nobody wants me.
Go away!"

"Of course I'll go away if you want me to," Gertrude replied, pouting
and looking injured, but yet lingering at Susan's side. She had
come to tell something, and she didn't wish to be defrauded of the
pleasure. "I guess you're asleep yet, Susie. Wake up and look at
this;" and Gertrude held her beautiful white hand before Susan's eyes,
and pointed to a superb solitaire diamond that blazed like a star on
her finger