nobility about the bony structure beneath the soft girlish flesh, and a
look of almost stern decision in the square chin and in the full rich
curve of the mouth. Her hair, which was too fine and soft to show its
thickness, drooped from its parting at the side in a dark wing over her
forehead, where it shadowed her arched black eyebrows and the clear
sweet gravity of her eyes. As she bent over her sewing the thin pure
lines of her body had a look of arrested energy, of relaxed but
exuberant vitality.

"You won't go to the dance to-night, will you, Gabriella?" inquired Mrs.
Carr nervously.

"No, I'm not going," answered the girl regretfully, for she loved
dancing, and her white organdie dress, trimmed with quillings of blue
ribbon, lay upstairs on the bed. "I'll never dance again if only Jane
won't go back to Charley. I'll work my fingers to the bone to help her
take care of the children."

"I'll never, never go back," chanted Jane with feverish passion.

"But I thought Arthur Peyton was coming for you," said Mrs. Carr. "He
will be so disappointed."

"Oh, he'll understand--he'll have to," replied Gabriella carelessly.

The sunshine faded slowly from the hyacinths on the window-sill, and
drawing her crocheted cape of purple wool closer about her, Mrs. Carr
moved a little nearer the fireplace. Outside the March wind was blowing
with a melancholy sound up the long straight street, and rocking the
glossy boughs of an old magnolia tree in the yard From the shining