swered with mild
brevity, and as if the young man's words had barely grazed her
consciousness.

A moment later she went to the window and, with her back to Lindsay,
poured the contents of a small leather purse into one hand and began to
count them softly.

He looked up again. "I am going to pay for Stella's ticket, mother. You
must not do it," he said.

She replaced the money immediately, but without impatience, and as
acquiescing in his assumption of his sister's future. "You have done so
much already," he apologized; but he knew that she was hurt, and chafed
to feel that only the irrational thing on his part would have seemed to
her the kind one.

Stella turned from the verdict of the dim looking-glass upon her
appearance to that of her brother's face. As she stood there in that
moment of pause, she might have been the type of all innocent and
budding life. The delicacy of floral bloom was in the fine texture of
her skin, the purple of dewy violets in her soft eyes; and this new
access of sadness, which was as yet hardly conscious of itself, had
thrown over the natural gayety of her young girlhood something akin to
the pathetic tenderness which veils the earth in the dawn of a summer
morning.

He felt it to be so, but dimly; and, young himself and already strained
by the exactions of personal desires, he answered only the look of
inquiry in her face,--"Will the merchants here never learn any taste in
dry-goods?"

Instantly he was sick with regret. Of what consequence was the too
pronounced blue of her dress in comparison with the light of happiness
in her dear face? How impossible for him to be here for even these few
hours without running counter to some cherished illusion or dear habit
of speech or manner.

"I tell you it's time we were going," Mrs. Morgan appealed, her anxiety
returning.

"We have thirty-five minutes yet," Lindsay said, looking at his watch;
but he gathered up the bags and umbrellas and followed as she moved
ponderously to the door.

Stella waited until they were out in the hall, and then looked around
the room, a poignant tenderness in her eyes. There was nothing congruous
between its shabby walls and cheap worn furniture and her own beautiful
young life; but the heart establishes its own relations, and tears rose
suddenly to her eyes and fell in quick succession. Even so brief a
farewell was broken in upon by her stepmother's call, and pressing her
wet cheek for a moment against the