r form of uncleanliness and
disorder."

"And Edgar is so punctual too!" cried Josephine by way of commentary.

Adelaide smiled, not broadly, not hilariously, only to the exact shade
demanded by conversational sympathy. "Then we shall agree in this,"
she said quietly.

"Oh I am sure you will agree, and in more than this," Josephine
returned, almost with enthusiasm.

Had she not been the willing nurse of this affair from the
beginning?--if not the open confidante, yet secretly holding the key
to her younger friend's mind and actions? and was she not, like all
the kindly disappointed, intensely sympathetic with love-matters,
whether wise or foolish, hopeful or hopeless?

"Who is it that you are sure will agree with Miss Adelaide, if any one
indeed could be found to disagree with her?" asked Edgar, standing in
the doorway.

Josephine laughed with the silliness of a weak woman "caught." She
looked at Adelaide slyly. Adelaide turned her quiet face, unflushed,
unruffled, and neither laughed sillily nor looked slyly.

"She was praising me for punctuality; and then she said that you were
punctual too," she explained cheerfully.

"We learn that in the army," said Edgar.

"But I have had to learn it without the army," she answered.

"Which shows that you have by the grace of nature what I have attained
only by discipline and art," said Edgar gallantly.

Adelaide smiled. She did not disdain the compliment. On the contrary,
she wished to impress it on Edgar that she accepted his praises
because they were her due. She knew that the world takes us if not
quite at our own valuation, yet as being the character we assume to
be. It all depends on our choice of a mask and to what ideal self we
dress. If we are clever and dress in keeping, without showing chinks
or discrepancies, no one will find out that it is only a mask; and
those of us are most successful in gaining the good-will of our
fellows who understand this principle the most clearly and act on it
the most consistently.

The evening was a pleasant one for Adelaide, being an earnest of the
future for which, if she had not worked hard, she had controlled much.
Edgar sang solos to her accompaniment, and put in his rich baritone to
her pure if feeble soprano; he played chess with her for an hour, and
praised her play, as it deserved: naturally, not thinking it necessary
to make love to his sisters, he paid her almost exclusive attention,
and looked the admiration he f