in of a bedroom candle whose wick, up to its neck therein, was
unable to find a scope for its genius, and yielded only a spectral
blue spark that went out directly if you carried it. Tilted over,
it would lick in the end--this was Sally's testimony; and if you
dropped the grease on the back of the soap-dish and thickened it up
to a good blob, it would come off click when it was cold, and not
make any mess at all.

"Yes, I've been wondering all day long," said she. "How I should enjoy
being there to see! How freezing and dignified the Dragon will be!
Mrs. Sales Wilson! Or perhaps she'll flare. (I wish this wick would;
and it's such disgraceful waste of good candle!)"

"I do think, kitten, you're unkind to the poor lady. Just think how
she must have dreamed about the splendid match her handsome daughter
was going to make! And, you know, it _is_ rather a come down...."

"Yes, of course it's a come down. But I don't pity the Dragon one bit.
She should have thought more of Tishy's happiness, and less of her
grandeur. (It's just beginning; the flame will go white directly.)"

"She'd got some one else in view then?" Rosalind was quickly
perceptive about it.

"Oh yes; don't you know? Sir Penderfield. (That'll do now, nicely;
there's the white flame!) Sir Oughtred Penderfield. He's a Bart.,
of course. But he's a horror, and they say his father was even worse.
Like father, like son! And the Dragon wanted Tishy to accept him."

At the name Rosalind shivered. The thought that followed it sent
a knife-cut to her heart. This man that Sally had spoken of so
unconsciously was _her brother_--at least, he was brother enough to
her by blood to make that thought a blade to penetrate the core of her
mother's soul. It was a case for her strength to show itself in--a
case for nettle-grasping with a vengeance. She would grasp this nettle
directly; but oh, for one moment--only one moment--just to be a little
less sick with the slice of the chill steel! just to quench the tremor
she knew would come with her voice if she tried now to say, "What was
the name? Tishy's _pretendu_'s, I mean; not his father's."

But she could take the whole of a moment, and another, for that
matter. So she left her words on her tongue's tip to say later, and
felt secure that Sally would not look up and see the dumb white face
she herself could see in the mirror she sat before. For, of course,
she saw Sally's reflection, too, its still thoughtful eyelids half
s