sweetest voice, "Yes--tomorrow evening, Arthur. Some others are
coming--the Wrights. You'd have to talk to Lottie . . . I don't
blame you. . . . Tomorrow evening, then. So sorry. Good-by."

The girl on the stairway stopped short, shrank against the wall.
A moment, and she hastily reascended, entered her room, closed
the door. Love had awakened the woman; and the woman was not so
unsuspecting, so easily deceived as the child had been. She
understood what her cousin and her aunt were about; they were
trying to take her lover from her! She understood her aunt's
looks and tones, her cousin's temper and hysteria. She sat down
upon the floor and cried with a breaking heart. The injustice of
it! The meanness of it! The wickedness of a world where even her
sweet cousin, even her loving aunt were wicked! She sat there on
the floor a long time, abandoned to the misery of a first
shattered illusion, a misery the more cruel because never before
had either cousin or aunt said or done anything to cause her
real pain. The sound of voices coming through the open window
from below made her start up and go out on the balcony. She
leaned over the rail. She could not see the veranda for the
masses of creeper, but the voices were now quite plain in the
stillness. Ruth's voice gay and incessant. Presently a man's
voice _his_--and laughing! Then his voice speaking--then the two
voices mingled--both talking at once, so eager were they! Her
lover--and Ruth was stealing him from her! Oh, the baseness, the
treachery! And her aunt was helping!. . . Sore of heart,
utterly forlorn, she sat in the balcony hammock, aching with
love and jealousy. Every now and then she ran in and looked at
the clock. He was staying on and on, though he must have learned
she was not coming down. She heard her uncle and aunt come up to