dmitted the reason with glorious frankness.

"Of course I hate her," she said, with a lift of her sleek brown head,
"didn't she usurp my prerogatives at the wedding? The best man
belongs, for that evening alone, to the maid of honour--he can't escape
it--it is his fate. Common civility should have chained him to my
chariot wheels, but with that white-headed Lilith at work on him, with
her half-shut eyes, she had him queered before he even saw me. But
wait. My turn will come."

Flora said to me:

"Of course I hate her, because _you_ love her. You love her better
than you love me. You have known her longer--that's the only reason!
She doesn't care _that_ for you. It's because you are married, and can
give her a good time that she pretends to care for you. _I_ know. Oh,
you may laugh and think I am jealous or insane or anything you like.
Well, then, I _am_ jealous, for I love you better than anybody in the
world, and I want you to love me in the same way. I love you better
than I love my mother--or my father--or even Artie Beg! And I am
jealous of every one you speak to. I am jealous most of all of Aubrey,
for you have eyes for no one on earth but him. I could hate him when I
think of it."

At that I _did_ laugh, but she was a good actress, and said it as if
she meant it.

Flora always acted as if she knew of my repressed childhood, and of
how, all my life, I had thirsted for praise. No matter if it had been
put on with a trowel, as hers undoubtedly was, I would have wrapped
myself in its tropical warmth and luxuriance, and never paused to
quarrel with its effulgence. While dear old Cary let her actions
speak, and seldom put her affection for me into words. But she had
been on the eve of sailing for a winter in Egypt when my hurried
wedding preparations and frantic telegram arrested her. The party
sailed without her, and she did not try to follow. And that was only
one of the many sacrifices she had made for me, and made without a
word, too.

She was a girl of thought and of ideas, but unfortunately she was a
great heiress, and fortune-hunters had made her suspicious and cynical.
Only Aubrey and I knew how glorious she could be when she let herself
out and expressed her real self.

The first thing Flora did to make me uncomfortable was to pump the
Angel about Artie's law-suit.

It was so intricate, so long drawn out, and so enormous in its
proportions, that it bade fair to resemble the famous J