seemed to me the embodiment of all that is best of my memories of
the old South; and your gentleness, your kindness, your tender grace,
your self-sacrifice and devotion to duty, mark you a queen among
women, and my heart shall be your throne. As to the announcement, have
it as you will--it is the lady's privilege."

"You are very good," she said tremulously. "This hour repays me for
all I have ever tried to do for others."

* * * * *

Graciella felt very young indeed--somewhere in the neighbourhood of
ten, she put it afterward, when she reviewed the situation in a calmer
frame of mind--as she crept softly away from the window and around the
house to the back door, and up the stairs and into her own chamber,
where, all oblivious of danger to her clothes or her complexion, she
threw herself down upon her own bed and burst into a passion of tears.
She had been cruelly humiliated. Colonel French, whom she had imagined
in love with her, had regarded her merely as a child, who ought to be
sent to school--to acquire what, she asked herself, good sense or
deportment? Perhaps she might acquire more good sense--she had
certainly made a fool of herself in this case--but she had prided
herself upon her manners. Colonel French had been merely playing with
her, like one would with a pet monkey; and he had been in love, all
the time, with her Aunt Laura, whom the girls had referred to
compassionately, only that same evening, as a hopeless old maid.

It is fortunate that youth and hope go generally hand in hand.
Graciella possessed a buoyant spirit to breast the waves of
disappointment. She had her cry out, a good, long cry; and when much
weeping had dulled the edge of her discomfiture she began to reflect
that all was not yet lost. The colonel would not marry her, but he
would still marry in the family. When her Aunt Laura became Mrs.
French, she would doubtless go often to New York, if she would not
live there always. She would invite Graciella to go with her, perhaps
to live with her there. As for going to school, that was a matter
which her own views should control; at present she had no wish to
return to school. She might take lessons in music, or art; her aunt
would hardly care for her to learn stenography now, or go into
magazine work. Her aunt would surely not go to Europe without inviting
her, and Colonel French was very liberal with his money, and would
deny his wife nothing, though Graciell