wounded and innocent, and leave her altogether in the wrong. But do I
want to break with Yanna? Would it be to my advantage? I think not.
The girls in our set do not like me. Julia Mills the other day called
me 'a little hypocrite' to my face. She did it with a laugh, but all
the other girls laughed too, and it was not pleasant. Yanna believes
in me. Then next summer we shall be at Woodsome, and mamma is right
about the long, tiresome summer days. Yanna was born in the village;
she knows every one, gentle and simple, and what is the use of
neighbors if you cannot gossip about them?

"Besides," she continued, "I have now three lovers, and I have not one
girl friend with whom I can talk them over--all the girls in our set
are so jealous of me--and Yanna would like to see my love letters, I
have no doubt. I wonder if she has a lover yet! I suppose not, poor
girl! Then there will be fun in watching Harry. Whether he be utterly
heartless, or, as mamma thinks, 'very impressionable,' he cannot meet
Yanna day after day without some consequences. I think, upon the
whole, it will be best to keep friends with Yanna." And having come to
this decision, she raised herself from the reflective attitude into
which she had fallen, and going to a table wrote as follows:

"My Beloved Yanna: Did you really think that your lowly birth could
change my love for you? No, no! Whether my Yanna be princess or
pauper, is no matter to me. I only long for our new house to be
finished, that I may have you more constantly near me." Then she
hesitated. She was on the point of saying she had long known of
Adriana's low birth; but she felt sure Adriana would ask her the "how"
and "when" of her information; and there was absolutely no good to
accrue from the falsity. But though she wrote eight pages of gushing
affection, she was not satisfied; she had not been able to choose her
words with precision, and far less able to prevent an _aura_ of
patronage which Adriana was as quick to feel as a barometer to answer
the atmospheric changes.

"I will not take any patronage from Rose Filmer," she muttered; and
then she flung Rose's letter into the fire; "I want nothing from her.
Oh! I must answer this letter at once; I could not eat my dinner if I
were so much in debt to my self-respect." So Adriana laid away her
sewing, and wrote:

"Dear Rose: Thank you for your overflowing letter. It is very kind
of you to overlook what you call the 'accident' of my bir