Miss Langham did not enjoy the ball; she felt injured and
aggrieved, and she assured herself that she had been hardly used.

She had only done her duty, and yet all the sympathy had gone to
her sister, who had placed her in a trying position. She thought
it was most inconsiderate.

Hope walked slowly across the veranda when the others had gone,
and watched the carriage as long as it remained in sight. Then
she threw herself into a big arm-chair, and looked down upon her
pretty frock and her new dancing-slippers. She, too, felt badly
used.

The moonlight fell all about her, as it had on the first night of
their arrival, a month before, but now it seemed cold and
cheerless, and gave an added sense of loneliness to the silent
house. She did not go inside to read, as she had promised to do,
but sat for the next hour looking out across the harbor. She
could not blame Alice. She considered that Alice always moved by
rules and precedents, like a queen in a game of chess, and she
wondered why. It made life so tame and uninteresting, and yet
people invariably admired Alice, and some one had spoken of her
as the noblest example of the modern gentlewoman. She was
sure she could not grow up to be any thing like that. She was
quite confident that she was going to disappoint her family. She
wondered if people would like her better if she were discreet
like Alice, and less like her brother Ted. If Mr. Clay, for
instance, would like her better? She wondered if he disapproved
of her riding on the engine with MacWilliams, and of her tearing