ity I cannot make the whole earth over to suit me," she
said, "instead of only this one room! Now I look entirely perfect to
you, do I not?"

"Yes," Maria replied, looking at her with wonder.

"It is my vanity room," said Miss Blair, and she laughed as if she
were laughing at herself. Then she added, with a little pathos, "You
yourself, if you had been in my place, would have wanted one little
corner in which you could be perfect."

"Yes, I should," said Maria. As she spoke she settled herself down
lower in her chair.

"Yes, you do look entirely too tall and straight in here," said Miss
Blair, and laughed again, with genuine glee. "Beauty is only a matter
of comparison, you know," said she. "If one is ugly and misshapen,
all she has to do is to surround herself with things ugly and
misshapen, and she gets the effect of perfect harmony, which is the
highest beauty in the world. Here I am in harmony after I have been
out of tune. It is a comfort. But, after all, being out of tune is
not the worst thing in the world. It might be worse. I would not make
the world over to suit me, but myself to suit the world, if I could.
After all, the world is right and I am wrong, but in here I seem to
be right. Now, child, tell me about yourself."

Maria told her. She left nothing untold. She told her about her
father and mother, her step-mother, and Evelyn, and her marriage, and
how she had planned to go to Edgham, get the little sum which her
father had deposited in the savings-bank for her, and then vanish.

"How?" asked Miss Blair.

Maria confessed that she did not know.

"Of course your mere disappearance is not going to right things, you
know," said Miss Blair. "That matrimonial tangle can only be
straightened by your death, or the appearance of it. I do not suppose
you meditate the stereotyped hat on the bank, and that sort of thing."

"I don't know exactly what to do," said Maria.

"You are quite right in avoiding a divorce," said Miss Blair,
"especially when your own sister is concerned. People would never
believe the whole truth, but only part of it. The young man would be
ruined, too. The only way is to have your death-notice appear in the
paper."

"How?"

"Everything is easy, if one has money," said Miss Blair, "and I have
really a good deal." She looked thoughtfully at Maria. "Did you
really care for that young man?" she asked.

Maria paled. "I thought so," she said.

"Then you did."

"It does not make a