"How pale you look," said Maggie, turning to the girl, "and how cold
you are! Yes, I am quite sure you are bitterly cold. Now you shall
have a good breakfast. Let me help you. Please do. I'll go to the
side-table and bring you something so tempting; wait and see."

"You mustn't trouble really," began Prissie.

Miss Oliphant flashed a brilliant smile at her. Prissie found her
words arrested, and, in spite of herself, her coldness began to thaw.
Maggie ran over to the side-table and Priscilla kept repeating under
her breath:

"She's not true-- she's beautiful, but she's false; she has the
kindest, sweetest, most comforting way in the world, but she only does
it for the sake of an aesthetic pleasure. I ought not to let her. I
ought not to speak to her. I ought to go away, and have nothing to do
with her proffers of goodwill, and yet somehow or other I can't resist
her."

Maggie came back with some delicately carved chicken and ham and a hot
cup of delicious coffee.

"Is not this nice?" she said. "Now eat it all up and speak to me
afterward. Oh, how dreadfully cold you do look!"

"I feel cold-- in spirit as well as physically," retorted Priscilla.

"Well, let breakfast warm you-- and-- and-- a small dose of the tonic
of sympathy, if I may dare to offer it."