d the waist of each, into her husband's room. Propped
with pillows, he reclined in an armchair while Miss Peirce
prepared his bed, an occupation she gave over upon this dazzling
entrance, departing tactfully.

"Look at these," cried the mother; "--from our garden, Jim, dear!
Don't we feel rich, you and I?"

"And--and--Laura," said the sick man, with the slow and imperfect
enunication caused by his disease; "Laura looks pretty--too."

"Isn't she adorable!" Cora exclaimed warmly. "She decided to be
the portrait of a young duchess, you see, all stately
splendour--made of snow and midnight!"

"Hear! hear!" laughed Laura; but she blushed with pleasure, and
taking Cora's hand in hers lifted it to her lips.

"And do you see Cora's crescent?" demanded Mrs. Madison. "What do
you think of _that_ for magnificence? She went down town this
morning with seven dollars, and came back with that and her party
gloves and a dollar in change! Isn't she a bargainer? Even for
rhinestones they are the cheapest things you ever heard of. They
look precisely like stones of the very finest water." They did--so
precisely, indeed, that if the resemblance did not amount to
actual identity, then had a jeweller of the town been able to
deceive the eye of Valentine Corliss, which was an eye singularly
learned in such matters.

"They're--both smart girls," said Madison, "both of them. And they
look--beautiful, to-night--both. Laura is--amazing!"

When they had gone, Mrs. Madison returned from the stairway, and,
kneeling beside her husband, put her arms round him gently: she
had seen the tear that was marking its irregular pathway down his
flaccid, gray cheek, and she understood.

"Don't. Don't worry, Jim," she whispered. "Those bright, beautiful
things!--aren't they treasures?"

"It's--it's Laura," he said. "Cora will be all right. She looks
out for--herself. I'm--I'm afraid for--Laura. Aren't you?"

"No, no," she protested. "I'm not afraid for either of them." But
she was: the mother had always been afraid for Cora.

. . . . At the dance, the two girls, attended up the stairway to
the ballroom by a chattering covey of black-coats, made a
sensational entrance to a gallant fanfare of music, an effect
which may have been timed to the premonitory tuning of instruments
heard during the ascent; at all events, it was a great success;
and Cora, standing revealed under the wide gilt archway, might
have been a lithe and shining figure from the year