Annie looked frightened.  “I fear not, Alice.  You see they would have had no time to think it over and decide.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“I have time to make you a little call and stop at the post-office for the last mail and get home just in time for supper.”

“Oh, well, you must come and dine with me a week from to-day, and I will have a little dinner-party,” said Alice.  “I will invite some nice people.  We will have Mr. von Rosen for one.”

Annie suddenly flushed crimson.  It occurred to her that Mr. von Rosen might walk home with her as he had done from Margaret’s, and a longing and terror at once possessed her.

Alice wondered at the blush.

“I was so sorry for poor Margaret last night,” Annie said with an abrupt change of subject.

“Yes,” said Alice.

“That poor Western girl, talented as she is, must have been oddly brought up to be so very rude to her hostess,” said Annie.

“I dare say Western girls are brought up differently,” said Alice.

Annie was so intent with what she had to tell Alice that she did not realise the extreme evasiveness of the other’s manner.

“Alice,” she said.

“Well, little Annie Eustace?”

Annie began, blushed, then hesitated.

“I am going to tell you something.  I have told Margaret.  I have just told her this afternoon.  I thought it might please her and comfort her after that terrible scene at her dinner last night, but nobody else knows except the publishers.”

“What is it?” asked Alice, regarding Annie with a little smile.

“Nothing, only I wrote The Poor Lady,” said Annie.

“My dear Annie, I knew it all the time,” said Alice.

Annie stared at her.  “How?”

“Well, you did not know it, but you did repeat in that book verbatim, ad literatim, a sentence, a very striking one, which occurred in one of your papers which you wrote for the Zenith Club.  I noticed that sentence at the time.  It was this:  ’A rose has enough beauty and fragrance to enable it to give very freely and yet itself remain a rose.  It is the case with many endowed natures but that is a fact which is not always understood.’  My dear Annie, I knew that you wrote the book, for that identical sentence occurs in The Poor Lady on page one hundred forty-two.  You see I have fully considered the matter to remember the exact page.  I knew the minute I read that sentence that my little Annie Eustace had written that successful anonymous book, and I was the more certain because I had always had my own opinion as to little Annie’s literary ability based upon those same Zenith Club papers.  You will remember that I have often told you that you should not waste your time writing club papers when you could do work like that.”

Annie looked alarmed.  “Oh, Alice,” she said, “do you think anybody else has remembered that sentence?”