ant some lace."

"Do buy the real article then. It is the chic thing now, to wear real
lace, and it does look supreme, among the miles of imitation that are
used."

Then Rose went to the library to answer Adriana's letter. It pleased
her to think it an important decision, and she sat some time with the
pen in her hand, and a judicial air on her beautiful countenance. For
she was undeniably a very attractive girl, as she sat in the sunshine
that morning, deliberating on Adriana's "deception"; there being to a
practiced observer many alluring contradictions in her face and
manner. Her hair was the color of ripe wheat, her eyes almond-shaped,
blue and limpid; her cheeks and chin dimpled; her mouth rosy and full;
her figure supple; her feet small, finely dressed, and quite in view;
her whole appearance that of a lovely innocent girl, on the threshold
of life. But this exquisite seeming contained possibilities of evil,
as well as good. Her dress was full of studied effects, her manners of
attitudes and languors; and her charming way of dropping her blue
eyes, and then suddenly flashing them open, was a conscious, and not a
natural, grace. Even her sweet credulousness had in it an equal
capacity for seductive wilfulness and petulance. Nor was she
unconscious of this double nature within her; for she had often said
to Adriana, "I feel as if there were twenty different girls in me--and
the majority of them bad."

Social life, however, so far, had had a salutary effect on her. She
had become more equable, more dependent on the approval of others,
and less liable to unconventional self-assertions. Nothing, indeed,
could have been better for Rose Filmer than the tight social rein
of a set which conscientiously tried to be both religious and
fashionable. She was compelled to honor _les convenances_, and to
obey them; compelled to suppress her spontaneity--which was seldom a
pleasant one--and to consider the feelings of others, as well as
the wishes of her own heart. At college she had been remarkable for
her self-willed personality; one season in society had taught her a
decent self-restraint. Consequently, she deliberated well the answer
to her friend's letter.

"If I want to break with her, I have now an excellent excuse," she
thought. "I could tell her that, though I have a soul above noticing
the accident of birth, my whole nature declares against deception.
There are a dozen moralities in the position, and I could retire