“He made up to Grace from the start.  They were laughing and talking together all the evening on a little sofa, just large enough for two, that stood in the bow-window.  There was a little crowd of young people around the two most of the time, and she was saying bright things to them all, but never, I noticed, at the expense of young Herbert, who made most of his remarks so low that no one but Grace could hear them.  She always smiled and often broke out into her musical laugh at what he said; and when Phil, who had been trapped into a game of whist with some old fogies, finally came back into the parlor and made his way to where Grace was having such a happy time, she even launched a shaft or two of her wit at him.

“I saw that the poor fellow was hurt:  he turned away without answering, though, and, coming over to where I was, sat down and began looking at an album, trying hard all the time to hide his feelings.  But in a moment Grace was hanging over his shoulder, oblivious of her surroundings, and lovingly begging his pardon if she had hurt him.  I have sometimes thought that Phil then fully realized for the first time how he cared for her.  The way in which her affection disregarded the presence of the crowd smote him, I imagine, with something like despair.  I saw him turn pale and catch his breath, and I knew his laugh too well to be deceived, as Grace was, when he made light of her self-accusations and declared that than taking offence at her words nothing had been further from his thoughts.  This was in a sense true, of course, for ordinarily he would have answered as light-heartedly almost as Grace herself; and it was only the feeling of jealousy, unconscious perhaps, at any rate irresistible, that gave her words undue—­no, not that exactly, but unusual influence over his feelings.

“For a while Phil acted as considerately as ever, and made himself thoroughly agreeable to several young ladies, whereat Grace was highly pleased and soon took up again her mood of gayety.  But when Phil brought her a plate and napkin and some things to eat, and found her and Herbert already served and with mock gravity breaking a piece of cake together on the stairs,—­’they were only doing it,’ Phil declared to me afterward, ’that they might touch each other’s hands,’—­he lost his head.  He must have spoken very bitterly, else he would never have aroused Grace’s anger.  I don’t know what he said, except that he complained about having come to such a thing as a church sociable, which he despised, and, inasmuch as he had done it for the sake of her enjoyment and pleasure, she might at least have shown him the same politeness she would have accorded to any of the insufferable prigs whom she seemed delighted to honor.

“Herbert started to reply, but Grace silenced him by a look, and said, ‘We have been as brother and sister since childhood.’  It was probably well for Herbert’s handsome face that he did not enter into a discussion with Phil.  They were both hot-tempered, and Phil had no scruples against asking him out of doors, and would have been as cool in his manner and as terrible in his strength as an iceberg.