now, but her eyes are larger, and gleam black, the color and
tenderness have gone out of her scarlet mouth, and she seems to grow
taller. Marcia is checked in her onslaught, and a half-misgiving comes
to her.

"After all," she says, presently, in a more moderate tone, "I supposed
you _did_ know something about it. You really ought to have been told
in the beginning, as all the rest were, it seems." And she adds the
last a little bitterly, remembering she has been shut out of the family
conference.

"Mr. Grandon did what was right and best," Violet returns, loyally.

"I suppose we all do what we think best," comments Marcia, with an air
of wisdom, and experience sits enthroned on the little strip of brow
above her eyes. "Well, I'm sorry you were not at the Brades', and I do
think Eugene ought to pay better attention to business, especially now
that Floyd is away. And I don't see why he should stay away from
parties if you do not want to go."

"There is no reason," answers Violet, coldly.

Marcia bids her good morning, and flies down the steps with the air of
one who has performed her whole duty. Now that she has attained to
married respectability, she feels quite free to criticise the rest of
the world, and she rejoices in the fact that she does carry more weight
than a single woman.

Violet stands by the window where Marcia left her. She is very glad to
be alone, and thankful that Cecil is at the Latimers' for the day,
although she is due there for a kind of nursery tea-party. A whirlwind
seems to have swept over her, to have lifted her up bodily and carried
her out of the sphere she was in two hours ago, and in this new country
all is strange; on this desolate shore where she is stranded the sea
moans in dull lament, as if the soul had gone out of that also, and
left an aching heart behind. She might dismiss Marcia's tirade as other
members of the family are wont to do, but there comes an awesome,
shivering fear that it is true in some degree. How many times she has
seen Gertrude check Marcia when Floyd was under discussion. She has
never tried to pry into family secrets, but she knows there have been
many about her; a certain kind of knowledge that all have shared, a
something against her. She has fancied that she made some advances in
living down the dislike; Mrs. Grandon has been kinder of late, and
Marcia, since her marriage, quite confidential. Instead, she has done
nothing, gained nothing.

If Gertrude w