blonde edging. 'It was all ready;
give it to her.'"

"Now!"

The wonderful, glistening, aurora-like robe goes over her head; she
stands in the midst, with the tender glowing color sweeping out from
her upon the white sheet pinned down above the carpet.

Was that anybody coming?

Aunt Blin left her for an instant to put up the window-top that had
been open to cool the lighted and heated room. Bel might catch cold,
standing like this.

"O, it is _so_ warm, Auntie! We can't have everything shut up!" And
with this swift excuse instantly suggesting itself and making
justification to her deceitful little heart that lay in wait for it,
Bel sprang to the opposite corner where the doorway opened full
toward her, diagonally commanding the room. She set it hastily just
a hand's length ajar. "There is no wind in the entry, and nobody
will come," she said.

When she was only excitedly afraid there wouldn't! I cannot justify
little Bel. I do not try to.

"Now, see! isn't it beautiful?"

"It sags just a crumb, here at the left," said Aunt Blin, poking and
stooping under Bel's elbow. "No; it is only a baste give way. You
shouldn't have sprung so, child."

The bare neck and the dimpled arms showed from among the cream-pink
tints like the high white lights upon the rose. Bel had not looked
in the glass yet: Aunt Blin was busy, and she really had not thought
of it; she was happy just in being in that beautiful raiment--in the
heart of its color and shine; feeling its softly rustling length
float away from her, and reach out radiantly behind. What is there
about that sweeping and trailing that all women like, and that
becomes them so? That even the little child pins a shawl about her
waist and walks to and fro, looking over her shoulder, to get a
sensation of?

The door _did_ shut, below. A step did come up the stairs, with a
few light springs.

Suddenly Bel was ashamed!

She did not want it, now that it had come! She had set a dreadful
trap for herself!

"O, Aunt Blin, let me go! Put something over me!" she whispered.

But Aunt Blin was down on the floor, far behind her, drawing out and
arranging the slope of the train, measuring from hem to band with
her professional eye.

The footstep suddenly checked; then, as if with an as swift
bethinking, it went by. But through that door ajar, in that bright
light that revealed the room, Morris Hewland had been smitten with
the vision; had seen little Bel Bree in all the pos