three feet away, her heart beating in annoyed taps to be
again interrupted by him in her pleasant thoughts.

Merry, laughing voices mingling with many footsteps came sounding down the
street and paused beside the gate. Marcia knew the voices and again slid
behind the shrubbery that bordered all the way to the house, and not even
a gleam of her light frock was visible. They trooped in, three or four
girl friends of Kate's and a couple of young men.

Marcia watched them pass up the box-bordered path from her shadowy
retreat, and thought how they would miss Kate, and wondered if the young
men who had been coming there so constantly to see her had no pangs of
heart that their friend and leader was about to leave them. Then she
smiled at herself in the dark. She seemed to be doing the retrospect for
Kate, taking leave of all the old friends, home, and life, in Kate's
place. It was not her life anyway, and why should she bother herself and
sigh and feel this sadness creeping over her for some one else? Was it
that she was going to lose her sister? No, for Kate had never been much of
a companion to her. She had always put her down as a little girl and made
distinct and clear the difference in their ages. Marcia had been the
little maid to fetch and carry, the errand girl, and unselfish, devoted
slave in Kate's life. There had been nothing protective and elder-sisterly
in her manner toward Marcia. At times Marcia had felt this keenly, but no
expression of this lack had ever crossed her lips, and afterwards her
devotion to her sister had been the greater, to in a measure compensate
for this reproachful thought.

But Marcia could not shake the sadness off. She stole in further among the
trees to think about it till the callers should go away. She felt no
desire to meet any of them.

She began again to wonder how she would feel if day after to-morrow were
her wedding day, and she were going away from home and friends and all the
scenes with which she had been familiar since babyhood. Would she mind
very much leaving them all? Father? Yes, father had been good to her, and
loved her and was proud of her in a way. But one does not lose one's
father no matter how far one goes. A father is a father always; and Mr.
Schuyler was not a demonstrative man. Marcia felt that her father would
not miss her deeply, and she was not sure she would miss him so very much.
She had read to him a great deal and talked politics with him whenever he