purposes of argument, with her perspective.  They had not the means, intellectual or moral, of feeling as she fancied.  If they had remained at home on the farm where they were born, Christine would have grown up that embodiment of impassioned suspicion which we find oftenest in the narrowest spheres, and Mela would always have been a good-natured simpleton; but they would never have doubted their equality with the wisest and the finest.  As it was, they had not learned enough at school to doubt it, and the splendor of their father’s success in making money had blinded them forever to any possible difference against them.  They had no question of themselves in the social abeyance to which they had been left in New York.  They had been surprised, mystified; it was not what they had expected; there must be some mistake.

They were the victims of an accident, which would be repaired as soon as the fact of their father’s wealth had got around.  They had been steadfast in their faith, through all their disappointment, that they were not only better than most people by virtue of his money, but as good as any; and they took Margaret’s visit, so far as they, investigated its motive, for a sign that at last it was beginning to get around; of course, a thing could not get around in New York so quick as it could in a small place.  They were confirmed in their belief by the sensation of Mrs. Mandel when she returned to duty that afternoon, and they consulted her about going to Mrs. Horn’s musicale.  If she had felt any doubt at the name for there were Horns and Horns—­the address on the card put the matter beyond question; and she tried to make her charges understand what a precious chance had befallen them.  She did not succeed; they had not the premises, the experience, for a sufficient impression; and she undid her work in part by the effort to explain that Mrs. Horn’s standing was independent of money; that though she was positively rich, she was comparatively poor.  Christine inferred that Miss Vance had called because she wished to be the first to get in with them since it had begun to get around.  This view commended itself to Mela, too, but without warping her from her opinion that Miss Vance was all the same too sweet for anything.  She had not so vivid a consciousness of her father’s money as Christine had; but she reposed perhaps all the more confidently upon its power.  She was far from thinking meanly of any one who thought highly of her for it; that seemed so natural a result as to be amiable, even admirable; she was willing that any such person should get all the good there was in such an attitude toward her.

They discussed the matter that night at dinner before their father and mother, who mostly sat silent at their meals; the father frowning absently over his plate, with his head close to it, and making play into his mouth with the back of his knife (he had got so far toward the use of his fork as to despise those who still ate from the edge of their knives), and the mother partly missing hers at times in the nervous tremor that shook her face from side to side.