ether. "It's a party!"

Kate looked at them in surprise. Suddenly their eagerness, their
excitement, struck her as being pathetic. What had they known of
parties, of the gay, pleasure-seeking life usual to girls of their
class?

The county of which Storm was the chief estate occupied toward its more
aristocratic neighbor, the Bluegrass, the relative position of an
unpretentious side-street toward the fashionable residence district of a
city. It had a social life of its own--what portion of the hospitable,
gregarious, pleasure-loving State has not? There were many simple
gaieties, dances, picnics, and the like, which took no account of
distance or other obstacles to the natural coming together of young men
and girls, and of older folk who have exchanged gallantry for gossip. In
this life, the mistress of Storm held a certain place. No farmers'
dinner, no fair, or barbecue, was complete without the presence of the
county's one great landowner.

But her daughters were creatures apart, young princesses among admiring
vassals. The country people looked with awe upon their tutors and
dancing-masters and singing-teachers, their books, their clothes from
the city. It had never occurred to them to include the little heiresses
of Storm in their humble amusements; they belonged so palpably to a
different world. The fact that this world was closed to them, because of
the unforgotten scandal connected with their mother, left Jemima and
Jacqueline singularly friendless; princesses, perhaps, but lonely
princesses in their castle.

For the first time Kate realized this. Hitherto she had felt that they
three were all sufficient unto themselves, with Philip Benoix, and James
Thorpe, and one or two others who came regularly to Storm. Now she said
to herself with a sharp pang, "My poor babies! My little hidden, lovely
girls!"

Aloud she said, "A party?--that is splendid! Who are coming to the
party? Some neighbor boys and girls?"

"Hardly," replied Jemima, with a superior smile. "The party is coming
from Lexington."

Kate's face changed. She asked in quick dread, "Who are they?" It was
not often that she met people from Lexington, except in the way of
business, and then it was an ordeal to her.

"We don't know. Isn't it exciting? Professor Thorpe is bringing them."

Then Kate smiled. They would not be people who knew her. She could trust
James Thorpe.

"I must make myself presentable," she murmured, moving toward the
stairs.