achieved a triumph
which she herself could never achieve. A cold hatred of the girl
swept over the woman. She forced her lips into a smile, but her eyes
were cruel.

"How very interesting, my dear," she said.

Poor Annie started. She was acute, for all her innocent trust in
another's goodness, and the tone of her friend's voice, the look in
her eyes chilled her. And yet she did not know what they signified.
She went on begging for sympathy and rejoicing with her joy as a
child might beg for a sweet. "Isn't it perfectly lovely, Margaret
dear?" she said.

"It is most interesting, my dear child," replied Margaret.

Annie went on eagerly with the details of her triumph, the book sales
which increased every week, the revises, the letters from her
publishers, and Margaret listened smiling in spite of her torture,
but she never said more than "How interesting."

At last Annie went home and could not help feeling disappointed,
although she could not fathom the significance of Margaret's
reception of her astonishing news. Annie only worried because she
feared lest her happiness had not cheered her friend as much as she
had anticipated.

"Poor Margaret, she must feel so very bad that nothing can reconcile
her to such a betrayal of her hospitality," she reflected as she
flitted across the street. There was nobody in evidence at her house
at window or on the wide verandah. Annie looked at her watch tucked
in her girdle, hung around her neck by a thin gold chain which had
belonged to her mother. It yet wanted a full hour of supper time. She
had time to call on Alice Mendon and go to the post-office. Alice
lived on the way to the post-office, in a beautiful old colonial
house. Annie ran along the shady sidewalk and soon had a glimpse of
Alice's pink draperies on her great front porch. Annie ran down the
deep front yard between the tall box bushes, beyond which bloomed in
a riot of colour and perfume roses and lilies and spraying heliotrope
and pinks and the rest of their floral tribe all returned to their
dance of summer. Alice's imposing colonial porch was guarded on
either side of the superb circling steps by a stone lion from over
seas. On the porch was a little table and several chairs. Alice sat
in one reading. She was radiant in her pink muslin. Alice seldom wore
white. She was quite sensible as to the best combinations of herself
with colours although she had, properly speaking, no vanity. She
arranged herself to the