knowing it. When a party gown for Rose was weighed in the
balance with some essential for maintaining their position upon the
society shelf, it had not the value of a feather. Mrs. Wilton and
Miss Pamela gave regular dinner-parties and receptions through the
season, but they invited people of undoubted social standing whom
Miss Farrel would have neglected for others on Rose's account. By a
tacit agreement, never voiced in words, young men or old who might
have made too heavy drains upon wines and viands were seldom invited.
The preference was for dyspeptic clergymen and elderly and genteel
females with slender appetites, or stout people upon diets. It was
almost inconceivable how Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela, with no actual
consultations to that end, practised economies and maintained
luxuries. They seemed to move with a spiritual unity like the
physical one of the Siamese twins. Meagre meals served magnificently,
the most splendid conservatism with the smallest possible amount of
comfort, moved them as one.

Rose, having been so young when she went to live with them, had never
realized the true state of affairs. Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela had
not encouraged her making visits in houses where her eyes might have
been opened. Then, too, she was naturally generous, and not
sharp-eyed concerning her own needs. When there were no guests at
dinner, and she rose from the table rather unsatisfied after her
half-plate of watery soup, her delicate little befrilled chop and dab
of French pease, her tiny salad and spoonful of dessert, she never
imagined that she was defrauded. Rose had a singularly sweet,
ungrasping disposition, and an almost childlike trait of accepting
that which was offered her as the one and only thing which she
deserved. When there was a dinner-party, she sat between an elderly
clergyman and a stout judge, who was dieting on account of the danger
of apoplexy, with the same graceful agreeableness with which she
would have sat between two young men.

Rose had not developed early as to her temperament. She had played
with dolls until Miss Pamela had felt it her duty to remonstrate. She
had charmed the young men whom she had seen, and had not thought
about them when once they were out of sight. Her pulses did not
quicken easily. She had imagination, but she did not make herself the
heroine of her dreams. She was sincerely puzzled at the expression
which she saw on the faces of some girls when talking with young