rt broken, one way or the other."

"And she married some one else?"

Both Aurora and Estelle were craning toward the speaker in a curiosity
full of sympathy.

Leslie was used to seeing them hang on her lips. "I do love to hear you
talk!" Aurora candidly said. "It doesn't make any difference whether I
know what you're talking about, it fascinates me, the way you say
things!" And the compliment disposed Leslie to talk to them no otherwise
than she talked with Lady Linbrook or Countess Costetti, leaving them to
grasp or not her allusions and fine shades. She was by a number of years
the youngest of the three drawn up to the fire; yet some advantage of
fluency, collectedness, habit of good society--a neat effect altogether
of authority, made her seem in a way the oldest.

"Violet," she began, like a grown person willing to indulge children
with a story, "is Madame Balm de Breze's sister. You saw Madame de Breze
that Friday evening at our house. Violet is very like her, only much
younger and a blonde. Amabel is--let us call things by their names in
the seclusion of this snug fireside--Amabel is scrawny; Violet was
ethereal. Amabel is sharp-featured; Violet's face was delicate and
clear-cut. I say _was_, because she has grown much stouter. We have
known them since they first came to Florence, and have been friends
without being passionately attached. They are Americans, but had lived
in Paris since Violet was a baby. They came here, orphans, because it is
cheaper. They used to live on the top floor of a stony old palace in Via
de' Servi, where they painted fans on silk, sending them to a firm in
Paris. Amabel did them exquisitely: shepherds and shepherdesses, corners
of old gardens, Cupids--Watteau effects, veritable miniature work. The
little sister was beginning to do them well, too; she painted only
flowers. Amabel had no objection to Violet marrying Gerald. He was as
far as possible from being a good match, but in those days both Amabel
and Violet seemed to live in an atmosphere that excluded the
consideration of things from a vulgar material point of view. Violet and
Gerald were alike in that, and so very much alike in their superfine
tastes and ways of thinking. _Nous autres_ who live upon this earth
wondered how they would keep the pot boiling in case of 'that not remote
contingent, _la famille_.' Gerald has an income simply tiny. You
would hardly believe how small. We supposed that now he would paint a
little more