e Eustaces were fond of
sitting in the twilight. The wind had come up, the violent strong
wind which comes out of the south, and Annie walked very near the
barberry hedge which surrounded Doctor Sturtevant's grounds, and the
green muslin lashed against it to its undoing. When Annie returned,
the skirt was devastated and Aunt Harriet decreed that it could not
be mended and must be given to the poor Joy children. There were many
of those children of a degenerate race, living on the outskirts of
Fairbridge, and Annie had come to regard them as living effigies of
herself, since everything which she had outgrown or injured past
repair, fell to them. "There will be enough to make two nice dresses
for Charlotte and Minnie Joy," said Aunt Harriet, "and it will not be
wasted, even if you have been so careless, Annie."

Annie could see a vision of those two little Joy girls getting about
in the remnants of her ghastly muslin, and she shuddered, although
with relief.

"You had better wear your cross barred white muslin afternoons now,"
said Aunt Harriet, and Annie smiled for that was a pretty dress. She
smiled still more when Aunt Jane said that now as the cross-barred
white was to be worn every day, another dress must be bought, and she
mentioned China silk--something which Annie had always longed to
own--and blue, dull blue,--a colour which she loved.

Just before she went to bed, Annie stood in the front doorway looking
out at the lovely moonlight and the wonderful shadows which
transformed the village street, like the wings of angels, and she
heard voices and laughter from the Edes' house opposite. Then
Margaret began singing in her shrill piercing voice from which she
had hoped much, but which had failed to please, even at the Zenith
Club.

Annie adored Margaret, but she shrank before her singing voice. If
she had only known what was passing through the mind of the singer
after she went to bed that night, she would have shuddered more, for
Margaret Edes was planning a possible _coup_ before which Annie, in
spite of a little latent daring of her own, would have been aghast.

Chapter V

The next morning Margaret announced herself as feeling so much better
that she thought she would go to New York. She had several errands,
she said, and the day was beautiful and the little change would do
her good. She would take the train with her husband, but a different
ferry, as she wished to go up town. Wilbur acquiesced rea