long enough to have an
opinion. Will she?"

"I do not know," said Anne, wondering at her own ability to speak the
words.

"And I--do not care! I am tired, Crystal: may I lie on your bed? Do
close that deathly window, and come over here, so that we can talk
comfortably," said Helen, throwing herself down on the white coverlet--a
long slender shape, with its white arms clasped under its head. The
small room was in shadow. Anne drew a chair to the bedside and sat down,
with her back to the moonlight.

"This is a miserable world," began Mrs. Lorrington. Her companion,
sitting with folded arms and downcast eyes, mentally agreed with her.

"Of course _you_ do not think so," continued Helen, "and perhaps, being
such a crystal-innocent, you will never find it out. There are such
souls. There are also others; and it is quite decided that I
hate--Rachel Bannert, who is one of them."

Anne had moved nervously, but at that name she fell back into stillness
again.

"Rachel is the kind of woman I dread more than any other," continued
Helen. "Her strength is feeling. Feeling! I tell you, Crystal, that you
and I are capable of loving, and suffering for the one we love, through
long years of pain, where Rachel would not wet the sole of her slipper.
Yet men believe in her! The truth is, men are fools: one sigh deceives
them."

"Then sigh," said the figure in the chair.

[Illustration: "ANNE DREW A CHAIR TO THE BEDSIDE AND SAT DOWN, WITH HER
BACK TO THE MOONLIGHT."]

"No; that is not my talent: I must continue to be myself. But _I_ saw
her on the piazza with Ward to-night; and I detest her."

"With--Mr. Heathcote?"

"Yes. Of course nothing would be so much to her disadvantage as to marry
Ward, and she knows it; he has no fortune, and she has none. But she
loves to make me wretched. I made the greatest mistake of my life when I
let her see once, more than a year ago, how things were."

"How things were?" repeated Anne--that commonplace phrase which carries
deep meanings safely because unexpressed.

"Of course there is no necessity to tell _you_, Crystal, what you must
already know--that Ward and I are in a certain way betrothed. It is an
old affair: we have known each other always."

"Yes," said the other voice, affirmatively and steadily.

"Some day we shall be married, I suppose: we like each other. But there
is no haste at present: I think we both like to be free. Heigh-ho! Do
you admire this dress, Crystal?"

"It