“As long as she is right it doesn’t matter what people think,” retorted Gabriella; but her protest, unlike her mother’s, was directed to the visible rather than to the invisible powers.  The thought of Jane’s children—­of the innocent souls so unaware of the awful predicament in which they were placed that their bodies could be devouring bread and damson preserves in the laundry.  The poignant thought of these children moved her more deeply than she had ever been moved before in her twenty years.  A passion for self-sacrifice rushed through her with the piercing sweetness of religious ecstasy.  Nothing like this had ever happened to her before—­not when she was confirmed, not when she had stood at the head of her class, not when she had engaged herself to Arthur Peyton two years before.  It was the pure flame of experience at its highest point that burned in her.

“I will take care of the children,” she said breathlessly.  “I will give up my whole life to them.  I will get a place in a store and work my fingers to the bone, if only Jane will never go back.”

For a moment there was silence; but while Gabriella waited for somebody to answer, she felt that it was a silence which had become vocal with inexpressible things.  The traditions of Uncle Meriweather, the conventions of Mrs. Carr, the prejudices of Jimmy, and the weak impulses of Jane, all these filled the dusk through which the blank faces of her family stared back at her.  Then, while she stood white and trembling with her resolve—­with the passionate desire to give herself, body and soul, to Jane and to Jane’s children—­the voice of Experience spoke pleasantly, but firmly, through Cousin Pussy’s lips, and it dealt with Gabriella’s outburst as Experience usually deals with Youth.

“You are a dear child, Gabriella,” it said; “but how in the world could you help Jane by going into a store?”

In the midst of the emotional scene, Cousin Pussy alone remained sweetly matter-of-fact.  Though she was not without orderly sentiments, her character had long ago been swept of heroics, and from her arched gray hair, worn à la Pompadour, to her pretty foot in its small neat boot, she was a practical soul who had as little use for religious ecstasy as she had for downright infidelity.  There seemed to her something positively unnatural in Gabriella’s manner—­a hint of that “sudden conversion” she associated with the lower classes or with the negroes.

“You are a dear child,” she repeated, biting her fresh lips; “but how will you help Jane by going into a store?”

“I can trim hats,” returned Gabriella stubbornly.  “Mr. Brandywine will take me into his new millinery department, I know, for I said something to him about it the other day.”

“Oh, Gabriella, not in a store!  It would kill mother!” cried Jane, with the prophetic wail of Cassandra.

“Not in a store!” echoed Mrs. Carr; “you couldn’t work in a store.  If you want to work,” she concluded feebly, “why can’t you work just as well in your home?”