was very depressing. Ella wondered if Lou really believed she was living at all. Lou's existence seemed to be devoted to making clothes for orphans, paying calls, keeping house, and gossiping, and yet Lou seemed satisfied. There were women, it seemed, who could live on from day to day without a feeling for beauty, or a thought of love.
The relations between the two sisters had become exceedingly strained. With a curious form of delicacy, not at all rare with spinsters in provincial towns of America, Lou had stopped speaking to Ella about what was uppermost in her mind. She could not bring herself to beg her sister to refrain from seeing Gareth; she could not, indeed, bring herself to mention his name at all. Her manner, however, had altered; the expression of her face and tone was reproachful, and as time went on, the Countess devoting herself more and more to the object of her passion, choosing rather to see him than to attend euchre-parties, teas, picnics, and lap-suppers, arranged more or less in her honour, Lou's anxiety increased.
One day, while the ladies were sewing for the orphans at Mayme Townsend's, the Countess, as usual, absent, Lou's crestfallen air was sufficiently apparent to attract general attention. She had, earlier in the day, attempted to urge upon Ella the advisibility of attending this function, but her arguments had not been heeded. The Countess had
