“Alice was such a dear,” she thought, and the thought made her face fairly angelic.  Then she recalled how lovely Alice had looked, and her own mobile face took on unconsciously Alice’s expression.  Standing before her looking-glass brushing out her hair, she saw reflected, not her own beautiful face between the lustrous folds, but Alice’s.  Then she recalled with pride Margaret’s imperturbability under such a trial.  “Nobody but Margaret could have carried off such an insult under her own roof too,” she thought.

After she was in bed and her lamp blown out and the white moon-beams were entering her open windows like angels, she, after saying her prayers, thought of the three, Margaret, Alice, and Karl von Rosen.  Then suddenly a warm thrill passed over her long slender body but it seemed to have its starting point in her soul.  She saw very distinctly the young man’s dark handsome face, but she thought, “How absurd of me, to see him so distinctly, as distinctly as I see Margaret and Alice, when I love them so much, and I scarcely know Mr. von Rosen.”  Being brought up by one’s imperious grandmother and two imperious aunts and being oneself naturally of an obedient disposition and of a slowly maturing temperament, tends to lengthen the long childhood of a girl.  Annie was almost inconceivably a child, much more of a child than Maida or Adelaide Edes.  They had been allowed to grow like weeds as far as their imagination was concerned, and she had been religiously pruned.

The next afternoon she put on her white barred muslin and obtained her Aunt Harriet’s permission to spend an hour or two with Margaret if she would work assiduously on her daisy centre piece, and stepped like a white dove across the shady village street.  Annie, unless she remembered to do otherwise, was prone to toe in slightly with her slender feet.  She was also prone to allow the tail of her white gown to trail.  She gathered it up only when her Aunt called after her.  She found Margaret lying indolently in the hammock which was strung across the wide shaded verandah.  She was quite alone.  Annie had seen with relief Miss Martha Wallingford being driven to the station that morning and the express following with her little trunk.  Margaret greeted Annie a bit stiffly but the girl did not notice it.  She was so full of her ignorant little plan to solace her friend with her own joy.  Poor Annie did not understand that it requires a nature seldom met upon this earth, to be solaced, under disappointment and failure, by another’s joy.  Annie had made up her mind to say very little to Margaret about what had happened the evening before.  Only at first, she remarked upon the beauty of the dinner, then she said quite casually, “Dear Margaret, we were all so sorry for poor Miss Wallingford’s strange conduct.”

“It really did not matter in the least,” replied Margaret coldly.  “I shall never invite her again.”

“I am sure nobody can blame you,” said Annie warmly.  “I don’t want to say harsh things, you know that, Margaret, but that poor girl, in spite of her great talent, cannot have had the advantage of good home-training.”