She hardly slept at all.  She heard the gathering chorus of the birds, in a half doze, until seven o’clock.  Then she got up and dressed herself.  She peeped cautiously into Evelyn’s room.  The girl was sleeping, her long, dark lashes curled upon her wan cheeks.  She looked ghastly, yet still lovely.  Maria looked at her, and her mouth compressed.  Then she turned away.  She crept noiselessly down the stairs and into the kitchen where Aunt Maria was preparing breakfast.  The stove smoked a little and the air was blue.

“How is she?” asked Aunt Maria, in a hushed voice.

“She is fast asleep.”

“Better let her sleep just as long as she will,” said Aunt Maria.  “These exhibitions are pure tomfoolery.  She is just tuckered out.”

“Yes, I think she is,” said Maria.

Aunt Maria looked keenly at her, and her face paled and lengthened.

“Maria Edgham, what on earth is the matter with you?” she said.  “You look as bad as she does.  Between both of you I am at my wit’s end.”

“Nothing ails me,” said Maria.

“Nothing ails you?  Look at yourself in the glass there.”

Maria stole a look at herself in a glass which hung over the kitchen-table, and she hardly knew her own face, it had gathered such a strange fixedness of secret purpose.  That had altered it more than her pallor.  Maria tried to smile and say again that nothing ailed her, but she could not.  Suddenly a tremendous pity for her aunt came over her.  She had not thought so much about that.  But now she looked at things from her aunt’s point of view, and she saw the pain to which the poor old woman must be put.  She saw no way of avoiding the giving her the pain, but she suffered it herself.  She went up to Aunt Maria and kissed her.

Aunt Maria started back, and rubbed her face violently.  “What did you do that for?” said she, in a frightened voice.  Then she noticed Maria’s dress, which was one which she seldom wore unless she was going out.  “What have you got on your brown suit for this morning?” said she.

“I thought I would go down to the store after breakfast and get some embroidery silk for that centre-piece,” replied Maria.

As she spoke she seemed to realize what a little thing a lie was, and how odd it was that she should realize it, who had been brought up to speak the truth.

“Your gingham would have been enough sight better to have worn this hot morning,” said Aunt Maria, still with that air of terror and suspicion.

“Oh, this dress is light,” replied Maria, going out.

“Where are you going now?”

“Into the parlor.”