she had had such things said to her she could not
have appeared so forgiving. Such absolute self-love, and self-belief,
was incomprehensible to her. She had accused Ida of more than she
could herself actually comprehend. She began to think Ida had a
forgiving heart, and that she herself had been the wicked one, not
She. She responded to everything which Ida said with a conciliatory
air. Presently Harry came in. He was late. He looked very worn and
tired. Ida sent Josephine up-stairs to get his smoking-jacket and
slippers, and Maria thought She was very kind to her father. Evelyn
climbed into his arms, but he greeted even her rather wearily. Ida
noticed it.

"Come away, darling," she said. "Papa is tired, and you are a heavy
little lump of honey," Ida smiled, entrancingly.

Harry looked at her with loving admiration, then at Maria.

"I tell you what it is, I feel pretty thankful to-night, when I think
of last night--when I realize I have you all home," said he.

Ida smiled more radiantly. "Yes, we ought to be very thankful," she
said.

Maria made up her mind that she would apologize to her if she had a
chance. She did not wish to speak before her father, not because she
did not wish him to know, but because she did not wish to annoy him,
he looked so tired. She had a chance after dinner, when Josephine was
putting Evelyn to bed, and Harry had been called to the door to speak
to a man on business.

"I am sorry I spoke as I did to you," she said, in a low voice, to
Ida.

They were both in the parlor. Maria had a school-book in her hand,
and Ida was embroidering. The rosy shade of the lamp intensified the
glow on her beautiful face. She looked smilingly at Maria.

"Why, my dear," she said, "I don't know what you said. I have
forgotten."

Chapter XVI

Now commenced an odd period of her existence for Maria Edgham. She
escaped a transition stage which comes to nearly every girl by her
experience in New York, the night when Evelyn was lost. There is
usually for a girl, if not for a boy, a stage of existence when she
flutters, as it were, over the rose of life, neither lighting upon it
nor leaving it, when she is not yet herself, when she does not
comprehend herself at all, except by glimpses of emotions, as one may
see one facet of a diamond but never the complete stone. Maria had,
in a few hours, become settled, crystallized, and she gave evidence
of it indisputably in one way--she had lost her dreams. Whe