s,
"whatever there was of that, or might have been, Mr. Wilmington has put
an end to, long ago. It never was anything but a fancy, and I don't
believe it could have been anything else if it had ever come to the
point."

"I'm glad it seems so to you now, Sue," said her sister, "but you
needn't tell me that you weren't very much taken with him at one time;
and if it's going to begin again, I'd much rather you wouldn't have him
here."

Suzette laughed at the old-maidish anxiety. "Do you think you shall see
me at his feet before the evening is over? But I should like to see him
at mine for a moment, and to have the chance of hearing his
explanations."

"I don't believe he's ever been bad!" cried Adeline. "He's just weak."

"Very well. I should like to hear what a man has to say for his
weakness, and then tell him that I had a little weakness of my own, and
didn't think I had strength to endure a husband that had to be
explained."

"Ah, you're in love with him, yet! You shall never have him here in the
world, after the way he's treated you!"

"Don't be silly, Adeline! Don't be romantic! If you had ever been in
love yourself, you would know that people outlive that as well as other
things. Let's see how the drawing-room will do for the dance?"

She jumped from her chair and touched the electric button at the
chimney. "You think that nothing but death can kill a fancy, and yet
nobody marries their first love, and lots of women have second
husbands." The man showed himself at the door, and she said to him in a
rapid aside: "Turn up the lights in the drawing-room, James," and
returned to her sister. "No, Adeline! The only really enduring and
undying thing is a slight. That lasts--with _me_!"

Adeline was moved to say, in the perverse honesty of her soul, and from
the inborn New England love of justice, "I don't believe he ever meant
it, Sue. I don't believe but what he was influenced--"

Suzette laughed, not at all bitterly. "Oh, _you're_ in love with him!
Well, you may have him if ever he offers himself to me. Let's look at
the drawing-room." She caught Adeline round her bony waist, where each
rib defined itself to her hand, and danced her out of the library,
across the hall into the white and gold saloon beyond. "Yes," she said,
with a critical look at the room, "it will do splendidly. We shall have
to put down linen, of course; but then the dancing will be superb--as
good as a bare floor. Yes, it will be a grand s