t out the address of the china collector, trembling
with fear that she might be dead or gone. But the collector was there,
very much alive, and as keenly anxious to possess the grape jug as ever.
The Old Lady, pallid with the pain of her trampled pride, sold the grape
jug and went away, believing that her great-grandmother must have turned
over in her grave at the moment of the transaction. Old Lady Lloyd felt
like a traitor to her traditions.

But she went unflinchingly to a big store and, guided by that special
Providence which looks after simple-minded old souls in their dangerous
excursions into the world, found a sympathetic clerk who knew just
what she wanted and got it for her. The Old Lady selected a very dainty
muslin gown, with gloves and slippers in keeping; and she ordered
it sent at once, expressage prepaid, to Miss Sylvia Gray, in care of
William Spencer, Spencervale.

Then she paid down the money--the whole price of the jug, minus a dollar
and a half for railroad fare--with a grand, careless air and departed.
As she marched erectly down the aisle of the store, she encountered
a sleek, portly, prosperous man coming in. As their eyes met, the man
started and his bland face flushed crimson; he lifted his hat and bowed
confusedly. But the Old Lady looked through him as if he wasn't there,
and passed on with not a sign of recognition about her. He took one
step after her, then stopped and turned away, with a rather disagreeable
smile and a shrug of his shoulders.

Nobody would have guessed, as the Old Lady swept out, how her heart was
seething with abhorrence and scorn. She would not have had the courage
to come to town, even for Sylvia's sake, if she had thought she would
meet Andrew Cameron. The mere sight of him opened up anew a sealed
fountain of bitterness in her soul; but the thought of Sylvia somehow
stemmed the torrent, and presently the Old Lady was smiling rather
triumphantly, thinking rightly that she had come off best in that
unwelcome encounter. SHE, at any rate, had not faltered and coloured,
and lost her presence of mind.

"It is little wonder HE did," thought the Old Lady vindictively. It
pleased her that Andrew Cameron should lose, before her, the front of
adamant he presented to the world. He was her cousin and the only living
creature Old Lady Lloyd hated, and she hated and despised him with all
the intensity of her intense nature. She and hers had sustained grievous
wrong at his hands,