“She did love him,” retorted Pocahontas, with annoyance, “and she proved it by being willing to sacrifice a little of her happiness to spare him the bitterness of a quarrel with his own brother.  The men were twins, and they loved one another, until unnatural rivalry pushed family affection into the background.  If the matter had been settled when both were at white heat, an estrangement would have ensued which it would have taken years to heal—­if it ever was healed.  There’s no passion so unyielding as family hate.  They were her kinsmen, too, men of her own blood; she must think of them, outside of herself.  The welfare of the man she didn’t love must be considered as well as that of the man she did love—­more, if any thing, because she gave him so much less.  How could she come between twin brothers, and turn their affection to hatred?  She knew them both—­knew that her own true lover would hold firm for all the years of his life, so that she could safely trust him for three.  And she knew that the lighter nature would, in all probability, prove inconstant; and if he left her of his own freewill, there could be no ill-feeling, and no remorse.”

Norma laughed derisively.  “And in this fine self-sacrifice she had no thought of her lover,” quoth she. “His pain was nothing.  She sacrificed him, too.”

“And why not?  Surely no man would grudge a paltry three years out of his whole life’s happiness to avoid so dreadful a thing as ill blood between twin brothers.  If she could wait for his sake, he could wait for hers.  A woman must not cheapen herself; if she is worth winning, she must exact the effort.”

“I think it is a lovely story,” Blanche interposed, decidedly.  “The lady behaved beautifully; just exactly as she should have done.  A quarrel between brothers is awful, and between twin brothers would be awfuler still.”

In her eager partisanship, Blanche’s language was more concise than elegant, but she wanted Pocahontas to know that she sided with her.

Norma regarded her sister with amusement not unmixed with chagrin.  These new friends were stealing away her follower.  Blanche was becoming emancipated.

“Any woman who trifles with her happiness, because of a scruple, is a fool,” she repeated, dogmatically.

Pocahontas held back the angry retort that was burning on the tip of her tongue, and let the subject drop.  Norma was her guest, and, after all, what did it matter what Norma thought?  But after that she refrained from repeating old stories before her; and of the two sisters, Blanche became her favorite.

As she entered the parlor with smiles and words of welcome, Blanche held out her hands filled with late roses and branches of green holly, bright with berries.

“See,” she said, “two seasons in one bouquet.  The roses are for your mother.  I found them on a bush in a sheltered corner; and as we came along I made Nesbit cut the holly for me.  I never can resist holly.  That tree by your gate is the loveliest thing I have ever seen; just like those in the store windows at home for Christmas.  Only we never had such a profusion of berries, and I don’t think they were as bright.  Do you think the holly we get at home is as bright, Norma?”