ing!"

"Yes, I've been crying," said Ella, mopping her nose, which still showed
a tendency to distil a tear at its tip. "And it's perfectly awful to me
to think you've been living so long in the same house with her."

Flora murmured breathlessly, "What in the world do you mean?"

"If you don't know, I certainly ought to tell you. I mean Clara," said
Ella distinctly.

Flora, sitting up on the edge of the high bed with the tips of her
little shoes hardly touching the floor, looked at Ella fascinated, her
lips a little apart. Ella had so exactly pronounced her own secret
thought of Clara. She was breathless to know what had been Clara's
performance at the Bullers'.

"Of course I've always known she was like that," said Ella, leaning back
in her chair with an air of resignation. "She's always getting
something. It's awful. It was the same even when we were at
boarding-school. I suppose she never did have enough money, though her
people were awfully nice; but she worked us all for invitations and
rides in our carriages, and I remember she got lots through Lillie
Lewis' elder brother, and he thought she was going to marry him, but she
didn't. She married Lulu Britton's father; and I guess she worked him
until he went under and they found there really was no money. So she's
been living on people ever since." Ella rocked gloomily.

"But she does it so nicely," Flora suggested. She still had the feeling
that it was not decent to own up to these most secret facts of people's
failings.

"Oh, yes, she's a perfect wonder," Ella admitted grudgingly; "look at
what she's done for you!" Ella's gesticulation was eloquent of how much
that had been. "But don't you imagine she cares about you any more than
she cares about me!" Ella began to cry again. "You were an awfully good
thing for her, Flora, and now that you're going to be married she's got
to have something else. But I do think she might have taken somebody
besides papa."

Flora gasped. "'Taken!' Ella, what do you mean?"

"I mean married," said Ella.

"'Married!'" For the time Flora had become a helpless echo.

"Oh, not yet," Ella defiantly nodded. "Not while there's anything left
of me."

Flora stammered. "Oh, Ella, no. Oh, Ella, are you sure?" She felt a
hysterical impulse to giggle.

"Sure?" Miss Buller cried. "I should think so! Why, she's simply making
a dead set for him."

This denouement, this climax to her somber expectations, struck Flora as
something wil