ul and frank, the other's
more beautiful but with less expression--windows lit with dazzling
light, but through which one saw--nothing.

"A new admirer, Annabel? But what has that to do with your going to
England?"

"Everything! He is Sir John Ferringhall--very stupid, very
respectable, very egotistical. But, after all, what does that matter?
He is very much taken with me. He tries hard to conceal it, but he
cannot."

"Then why," Anna asked quietly, "do you run away? It is not like you."

Annabel laughed softly.

"How unkind!" she exclaimed. "Still, since it is better to tell you,
Sir John is very much in earnest, but his respectability is something
altogether too overpowering. Of course I knew all about him years ago,
and he is exactly like everybody's description of him. I am afraid,
Anna, just a little afraid, that in Paris I and my friends here might
seem a trifle advanced. Besides, he might hear things. That is why I
called myself Anna."

"You--you did what?" Anna exclaimed.

"Called myself Anna," the girl repeated coolly. "It can't make any
difference to you, and there are not half a dozen people in Paris who
could tell us apart."

Anna tried to look angry, but her mouth betrayed her. Instead, she
laughed, laughed with lips and eyes, laughed till the tears ran down
her cheeks.

"You little wretch!" she exclaimed weakly. "Why should I bear the
burden of your wickedness? Who knows what might come of it? I shall
permit nothing of the sort."

Annabel shrugged her shoulders.

"Too late, my dear girl," she exclaimed. "I gave your name. I called
myself Anna. After all, what can it matter? It was just to make sure.
Three little letters can't make a bit of difference."

"But it may matter very much indeed," Anna declared. "Perhaps for
myself I do not mind, but this man is sure to find out some day, and
he will not like having been deceived. Tell him the truth, Annabel."

"The truth!"

There was a brief but intense silence. Anna felt that her words had
become charged with a fuller and more subtle meaning than any which
she had intended to impart. "The truth!" It was a moment of
awkwardness between the two sisters--a moment, too, charged with its
own psychological interest, for there were secrets between them which
for many months had made their intercourse a constrained and difficult
thing. It was Annabel who spoke.

"How crude you are, Anna!" she exclaimed with a little sigh. "Sir John
is not at all t