window in the large, luxurious room was open and through them drifted a flow of air, scented with the sea and the breath of flowers. Then rising on the stillness came the sound of voices—a man's and a woman's—from the balcony below. They were Mr. Janney's and Miss Maitland's—the secretary was preparing to read the morning papers to her employer. 

 Suzanne opened her eyes and sat up, the smile dying from her lips. The dreamy complacence left her face and was replaced by a look of brooding irritation. It changed her so completely that she ceased to be pretty—suddenly showed her years, and was revealed as a woman, already fading, preyed upon by secret vexations. 

 She rose adjusting her dress, a marvelous creation of thin white material with floating edges of lace. She went to the mirror, powdered her face and touched her lips with a stick of red salve, then studied her reflection. It should have been satisfying, delicate, fragile, a lovely, ethereal creature, with baby blue eyes and silky, maize-colored hair. It was not to be believed that any man could look at Esther Maitland when she was by—and yet—and yet—! She turned from the mirror with an angry mutter and went downstairs. 

 On the balcony Miss Maitland was looking over the papers with Mr. Janney opposite waiting to be read to. Suzanne sat down near them where she could command the place in the woods where the path from Council Oaks struck into the lawn. With a sidelong eye she noted the Secretary's hand on the edge of the paper—narrow, satin-skinned, with fingers finely tapering and pink-tipped. Her fingers were short and spatulate, showing her common blood, and all the pink on them had to be applied with a chamois. Miss Maitland began to read—the war news first was the rule—and her voice was a pleasure to hear, cultivated, soft, musical. Suzanne, for all her expensive education and subsequent efforts, had never been able to refine hers; the ugly Pittsburg burr would crop out. 

 A gnawing fancy that she had been fighting against for weeks rose suddenly into jealous conviction. This girl—a penniless nobody—had a quality, an air, a distinction, that she with all her advantages had never been able to acquire, could never acquire. It was something innate, something you were born with, something that made you fitted for any sphere. Immovable, apparently absorbed in the reading, Suzanne began to think how she could induce her mother to dispense with the services of the Social Secretary. 

 When the war news was finished Miss Maitland passed on to the news of the day. 

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