ple of good-humor."

"I will set you an example of plain-speaking. I am more sorry than I can
say, Magdalen, to meet you as I met you here just now!"

"What next, I wonder? You meet me in the shrubbery at home, talking over
the private theatricals with my old playfellow, whom I knew when I was
no taller than this parasol. And that is a glaring impropriety, is it?
'Honi soit qui mal y pense.' You wanted an answer a minute ago--there it
is for you, my dear, in the choicest Norman-French."

"I am in earnest about this, Magdalen--"

"Not a doubt of it. Nobody can accuse you of ever making jokes."

"I am seriously sorry--"

"Oh, dear!"

"It is quite useless to interrupt me. I have it on my conscience to tell
you--and I _will_ tell you--that I am sorry to see how this intimacy is
growing. I am sorry to see a secret understanding established already
between you and Mr. Francis Clare."

"Poor Frank! How you do hate him, to be sure. What on earth has he done
to offend you?"

Norah's self-control began to show signs of failing her. Her dark cheeks
glowed, her delicate lips trembled, before she spoke again. Magdalen
paid more attention to her parasol than to her sister. She tossed it
high in the air and caught it. "Once!" she said--and tossed it up again.
"Twice!"--and she tossed it higher. "Thrice--" Before she could catch
it for the third time, Norah seized her passionately by the arm, and the
parasol dropped to the ground between them.

"You are treating me heartlessly," she said. "For shame, Magdalen--for
shame!"

The irrepressible outburst of a reserved nature, forced into open
self-assertion in its own despite, is of all moral forces the hardest
to resist. Magdalen was startled into silence. For a moment, the two
sisters--so strangely dissimilar in person and character--faced one
another, without a word passing between them. For a moment the deep
brown eyes of the elder and the light gray eyes of the younger looked
into each other with steady, unyielding scrutiny on either side. Norah's
face was the first to change; Norah's head was the first to turn away.
She dropped her sister's arm in silence. Magdalen stooped and picked up
her parasol.

"I try to keep my temper," she said, "and you call me heartless for
doing it. You always were hard on me, and you always will be."

Norah clasped her trembling hands fast in each other. "Hard on you!" she
said, in low, mournful tones--and sighed bitterly.

Magdalen drew