ing to that dreadful dead level. She doesn't quite know
whether to take up the artistic life or be a society queen, and she
feels that nobody understands her at home. It makes her nearly wild when
Aunt Elizabeth comes back from one of her grand visits and acts as if
SHE wasn't anything. She came over right after the row, of course, and
told me all about it--she had on her new white China silk and her hat
with the feathers. She said she was so excited about everything that
she couldn't stop to think about what she put on; she looked terribly
dressed up, but she had come all through the village with her waist
unfastened in the middle of the back--she said she couldn't reach the
hooks. Aunt Elizabeth had gone away that morning for overnight, so
nobody could get at her to find out about her actions with Mr. Goward,
and the telegram she had sent to him, until the next day, and every one
was nearly crazy. They talked about it for two hours before Maria went
home. Then Peggy had locked herself in her room, and her mother had
gone out, and her grandmother was sitting now on the piazza, rocking and
sighing, with her eyes shut. Alice said each person had got dreadfully
worked up, not only about Aunt Elizabeth, but about all the ways every
other member of the family had hurt that person at some time. Maria said
that Peggy never would take HER advice, and Peggy returned that Maria
had hurt her more than any one by her attitude toward Harry Goward, that
she was so suspicious of him that it had made him act unnaturally from
the first--that nothing had hurt her so much since the time Maria took
away Peggy's doll on purpose when she was a little girl--the doll she
used to sleep with--and burned it; it was something she had NEVER got
over.

Then her mother, who hadn't been talking very much, said that Peggy
didn't realize the depth of Maria's affection for her, and what a good
sister she had been, and how she had taken care of Peggy the winter that
Peggy was ill--and then she couldn't help saying that, bad as was this
affair about Harry Goward, it wasn't like the anxiety one felt about a
sick child; there were times when she felt that she could bear anything
if Charles Edward's health were only properly looked after. Of course
Lorraine was young and inexperienced, but if she would only use her
influence with him--

Alice broke off suddenly, and said she had to go--it was just as Dr.
Denbigh's little auto was coming down the street. She