as intimate as I
please with Lucile," Charlotte told herself; which goes to show that
Mr. Landor was right when he felt she needed different training.

And now having nothing else to do, she wandered to the piano, and
finding an old music book, turned its pages, playing snatches of
"Monastery Bells" and "Listen to the Mocking-bird." She was putting a
good deal of feeling into "I'm a Pilgrim, and I'm a Stranger," when a
sound behind caused her to start.

"You have a pretty touch, my dear," said Aunt Virginia. "We have been
out to Marat's greenhouse, and I have brought you some roses." She
laid them on the piano as she spoke, and slipped away before Charlotte
could make any response.

Was it a peace offering?

CHAPTER FOURTH

MISS WILBUR

Miss Wilbur was perplexed to the point of annoyance, a state of mind
most unusual with her.

She was by nature a serene person, quite content with her easy,
uneventful life. The outside world she faced with a timid reserve
which had not diminished with years and indulgence, finding her life
in her family circle and the round of small cares, her flowers and her
embroidery. She disliked responsibility, and except in what she
considered matters of principle was inclined to distrust her own
judgment. She was full of family loyalty, and had been satisfied to
look on from her place in the background, while her more clever and
ambitious sisters and brothers one by one passed from the home into
the world.

Naturally enough she had not married. She had not cared to, and had
never given any one the opportunity to combat this indifference. Most
people liked her, but she had few intimate friends, having apparently
no desire to be singled out in any way, and yet she was warmly
affectionate. In truth Miss Virginia was an elusive sort of person,
sometimes allowing a glimpse of herself in all her unselfish
sweetness, and then, presto! her reserve had taken alarm, the vision
was gone.

She was conventional, made so by her environment; yet her failings,
many of them, so her sister Caroline declared, were those of an
untrained child. She was careless,--as Charlotte had noticed, she
sometimes forgot the fastenings of her skirt; when she wrote, she
invariably inked her fingers; and she was constantly losing or
breaking her glasses. She treated these matters lightly herself, but
tried to conceal them from her sister.

In their girlhood this sister, a few years older than she, had been