hat the love she once refused and which she would fain
recover was lost to her forever rankled in her breast, Grace never made
a sign, and laughed as gayly and looked almost as young and handsome as
in the days when Richard was wooing her in the pleasant old English town
across the sea. She had loved Richard then, but, alas! loved money more,
and she chose a richer man, old enough to be her father, who had died
when she was twenty-one and left her the possessor of nearly half a
million, every dollar of which she would have given to have recalled the
days which were gone forever.

Grace had been intending to call upon Mrs. Tracy ever since she came to
the park. 'Not,' as she said to her friend, Edith Hastings, 'for the
woman's sake, for she knew her to be vulgar: but because she was a
neighbor and the sister-in-law of Arthur Tracy,' And so at last she
came, partly out of compliment and partly on business, into which last
she plunged at once. She was going to the mountains with Mr. Harrington
and Miss Hastings: her cook, who had been with her seven years, had gone
to attend a sick mother, and had recommended as a fit person to take her
place the woman who had just left Tracy Park.

'I do not like to take a servant without first knowing something of her
from her last employer,' she said: 'and, if you do not mind, I should
like to ask if Martha left for anything very bad.'

Mrs. Tracy colored scarlet, and for a moment was silent. She could not
tell that fine lady in the white muslin dress, with seas of lace and
embroidery, that Martha had called her _second classy_, and _stingy_ and
_strooping_, and _mean_, because she objected to the amount of coal
burned, and bread thrown away, and time consumed at the table, besides
turning down the gas in the kitchen when she thought it too light, to
say nothing of turning it off at the meter at ten o'clock, just when the
servants were beginning to enjoy themselves. All this she felt would
scarcely interest a person like Mrs. Atherton, who might sympathize with
Martha more than with herself, so she finally said:

'Martha was saucy to me, and on the whole it was better for them all to
go; and so I am doing my own work.'

'Doing your own work!' and Grace gave a little cry of surprise, while
her shoulders shrugged meaningly, and made Mrs. Tracy almost as angry as
she had been with Martha when she called her mean and second-class. 'It
cannot be possible that you cook, and wash, and iron