“I don’t care what gentlemen think,” said Maria, “but I do care for my poor, forsaken little sister.”  Maria’s voice broke with rage and distress.

“You are exceedingly disagreeable, Maria,” said Ida, with the radiant air of one who realizes her own perfect agreeableness.

Maria’s lip curled.  She said nothing.

“Evelyn’s wardrobe is in perfect order for the summer,” said Ida.  “Of course she can wear her white frocks in warm weather, and she has her black silk frocks and coat.  I have plenty of black sash ribbons for her to wear with her white frocks.  You will see to it that she always wears a black sash with a white frock, I hope, Maria.  I should not like people in Amity to think I was lacking in respect to your father’s memory.”

“Yes, I will be sure that Evelyn wears a black sash with a white frock,” replied Maria, in a bitter voice.

She rose abruptly and left the room.  Up in her own chamber she threw herself face downward upon her bed, and wept the tears of one who is oppressed and helpless at the sight of wrong and disloyalty to one beloved.  Maria hardly thought of Evelyn in her own personality at all.  She thought of her as her dead father’s child, whose mother was going away and leaving her within less than three weeks after her father’s death.  She lost sight of her own happiness in having the child with her, in the bitter reflection over the disloyalty to her father.

“She never cared at all for father,” she muttered to herself—­“never at all; and now she does not really care because he is gone.  She is perfectly delighted to be free, and have money enough to go to Europe, although she tries to hide it.”

Maria felt as if she had caught sight of a stone of shame in the place where a wife’s and mother’s heart should have been.  She felt sick with disgust, as if she had seen some monster.  It never occurred to her that she was possibly unjust to Ida, who was, after all, as she was made, a being on a very simple and primitive plan, with an acute perception of her own welfare and the means whereby to achieve it.  Ida was in reality as innocently self-seeking as a butterfly or a honey-bee.  She had never really seen anybody in the world except herself.  She had been born humanity blind, and it was possibly no more her fault than if she had been born with a hump.

The next day Ida went to New York with Mrs. Voorhees to complete some preparations for her journey, and to meet Mrs. Voorhees’s sister, who was expected to arrive from the South, where she had been spending the winter.  That evening the Voorheeses came over and discussed their purchases, and Miss Wyatt, the sister, came with them.  She was typically like Mrs. Voorhees, only younger, and with her figure in better restraint.  She had so far successfully fought down an hereditary tendency to avoirdupois.  She had brilliant yellow hair and a brilliant complexion, like her sister, and she was as well, even better, dressed.  Ida had purchased that day a steamer-rug, a close little hat, and a long coat for the voyage, and the women talked over the purchases and their plans for travel with undisguised glee.  Once, when Ida met Maria’s sarcastic eyes, she colored a little and complained of a headache, which she had been suffering with all day.