er. His face contracted with
sudden pain, and Marcia, cut to the heart, read the meaning, and felt sick
and sore too.

"Oh, I could not wear that," she said sadly, "it is only chintz. It would
not be nice enough, but thank you. I shall be all right. Don't trouble
about me," and she forced a weak smile to light him from the house, and
shut from his pained eyes the knowledge of how he had hurt her, for with
those words of his had come the vision of herself that happy night as she
stood at the gate in the stillness and moonlight looking from the portal
of her maidenhood into the vista of her womanhood, which had seemed then
so far away and bright, and was now upon her in sad reality. Oh, if she
could but have caught that sentence of his about her little chintz frock
to her heart with the joy of possession, and known that he said it because
he too had a happy memory about her in it, as she had always felt the
coming, misty, dream-expected lover would do!

She spread the available frocks out upon the bed after the other things
were put neatly away in closet and drawer, and sat down to decide the
matter. David's suggestion while impossible had given her an idea, and she
proceeded to carry it out. There was a soft sheer white muslin, whereon
Kate had expended her daintiest embroidering, edged with the finest of
little lace frills. It was quaint and simple and girlish, the sweetest,
most simple affair in all of Kate's elaborate wardrobe, and yet, perhaps,
from an artistic point of view, the most elegant. Marcia soon made up her
mind.

She dressed herself early, for David had said he would be home by four
o'clock and they would start as soon after as he could get ready. His
aunts wished to show her the old garden before dark.

When she came to the arrangement of her hair she paused. Somehow her soul
rebelled at the style of Kate. It did not suit her face. It did not accord
with her feeling. It made her seem unlike herself, or unlike the self she
would ever wish to be. It suited Kate well, but not her. With sudden
determination she pulled it all down again from the top of her head and
loosened its rich waves about her face, then loosely twisted it behind,
low on her neck, falling over her delicate ears, until her head looked
like that of an old Greek statue. It was not fashion, it was pure instinct
the child was following out, and there was enough conformity to one of the
fashionable modes of the day to keep her from looking o