a
terrified whisper.

"No, I am not a mite worse. Run along, child, and hang up your dress,
then go to bed; it's after nine o'clock."

It did not take much at that time to reassure Maria. She had
inherited something of the optimism of her father. She carried her
pink dress into the kitchen, with wary eyes upon the windows, and
hung it up as her mother had directed. On her return she paused a
moment at the foot of the stairs in the hall, between the dining-room
and sitting-room. Then, obeying an impulse, she ran into the
sitting-room and threw her soft little arms around her mother's neck.
"I'm real sorry I wore that dress without asking you, mother," she
said. "I won't again, honest."

"Well, I hope you will remember," replied her mother. "If you wear
the best you have common you will never have anything." Her tone was
chiding, but the look on her face was infinitely caressing. She
thought privately that never was such a darling as Maria. She looked
at the softly flushed little face, with its topknot of gold, the
delicate fairness of the neck, and slender arms, and she had a
rapture of something more than possession. The beauty of the child
irradiated her very soul, the beauty and the goodness, for Maria
never disobeyed but she was sorry afterwards, and somehow glorified
faults seem lovelier than cold virtues. "Well, run up-stairs to bed,"
said she. "Be careful of your lamp."

When Maria was in her own room she set the lamp on the dresser and
gazed upon her face reflected in the mirror. That was her nightly
custom, and might have been regarded as a sort of fetich worship of
self. Nothing, in fact, could have been lovelier than that face of
childish innocence and beauty, with the soft rays of the lamp
illuminating it. Her blue eyes seemed to fairly give forth light, the
soft pink on her cheeks deepened until it was like the heart of a
rose. She opened her exquisitely curved lips, and smiled at herself
in a sort of ecstasy. She turned her head this way and that in order
to get different effects. She pulled the little golden fleece of hair
farther over her forehead. She pushed it back, revealing the bold yet
delicate outlines of her temples. She thought how glad she should be
when her hair was grown. She had had an illness two years before, and
her mother had judged it best to have her hair cut short. It was now
just long enough to hang over her ears, curving slightly forward like
the old-fashioned earlocks. She had