in her frank
enjoyment of ease and luxury. Nevertheless, Lorania had a good,
able-bodied, New England conscience, capable of staying awake nights
without flinching; and perhaps from her stanch old Puritan forefathers
she inherited her simple integrity so that she neither lied nor
cheated--even in the small, whitewashed manner of her sex--and valued
loyalty above most of the virtues. She had an innocent pride in her
godly and martial ancestry, which was quite on the surface, and led
people who did not know her to consider her haughty.

For fifteen years she had been an orphan, the mistress of a very large
estate. No doubt she had been sought often in marriage, but never until
lately had Lorania seriously thought of marrying. Sibyl said that she
was too unsentimental to marry. Really she was too romantic. She had a
longing to be loved, not in the quiet, matter-of-fact manner of her
suitors, but with the passion of the poets. Therefore the presence of
another skeleton in Mrs. Ellis's closet, because she knew about a
certain handsome Italian marquis who at this period was conducting an
impassioned wooing by mail. Margaret did not fancy the marquis. He was
not an American. He would take Lorania away. She thought his very virtue
florid, and suspected that he had learned his love-making in a bad
school. She dropped dark hints that frightened Lorania, who would
sometimes piteously demand, "Don't you think he _could_ care for
me--for--for myself?" Margaret knew that she had an overweening distrust
of her own appearance. How many tears she had shed first and last over
her unhappy plumpness it would be hard to reckon. She made no account of
her satin skin, or her glossy black hair, or her lustrous violet eyes
with their long, black lashes, or her flashing white teeth; she glanced
dismally at her shape and scornfully at her features, good, honest,
irregular American features, that might not satisfy a Greek critic, but
suited each other and pleased her countrymen. And then she would sigh
heavily over her figure. Her friend had not the heart to impute the
marquis's beautiful, artless compliments to mercenary motives. After
all, the Italian was a good fellow, according to the point of view of
his own race, if he did intend to live on his wife's money, and had a
very varied assortment of memories of women.

But Margaret dreaded and disliked him all the more for his good
qualities. To-day this secret apprehension flung a cloud over the