“What effect do you suppose it would have on mine?”

His face softened as he mused on the kind of woman his sister was.

“Now don’t you try to do anything else,” she added severely.  “I don’t like your expression.”

He laughed outright:  “What do you suppose I’d do?”

“I don’t suppose you’d do anything; but don’t you do it!”

Miss Anna’s invitation to Harriet had been written some days before.

She had sent down to the book-store for ten cents’ worth of tinted note paper and to the drugstore for some of Harriet’s favorite sachet powder.  Then she put a few sheets of the paper in a dinner plate and sprinkled the powder over them and set the plate where the powder could perfume the paper but not the house.  Miss Anna was averse to all odor-bearing things natural or artificial.  The perfect triumph of her nose was to perceive absolutely nothing.  The only trial to her in cooking was the fact that so often she could not make things taste good without making them smell good.

In the course of time, bending over a sheet of this note paper, with an expression of high nasal disapproval.  Miss Anna had written the following note: 

“A.  Hardage, Esq., presents the compliments of the season to Miss Crane and begs the pleasure of her company to the ball.  The aforesaid Hardage, on account of long intimacy with the specified Crane, hopes that she (Crane) will not object to riding alone at night in a one-horse rockaway with no side curtains.  Crane to be hugged on the way if Hardage so desires—­and Hardage certainly will desire.  Hardage and Crane to dance at the ball together while their strength lasts.”

Having posted this letter, Miss Anna went off to her orphan and foundling asylum where she was virgin mother to the motherless, drawing the mantle of her spotless life around little waifs straying into the world from hidden paths of shame.

X

It was past one o’clock on the night of the ball.

When dew and twilight had fallen on the green labyrinths of Marguerite’s yard, the faintest, slenderest moon might have been seen bending over toward the spot out of drapery of violet cloud.  It descended through the secluded windows of Marguerite’s room and attended her while she dressed, weaving about her and leaving with her the fragrance of its divine youth passing away.  Then it withdrew, having appointed a million stars for torches.

Matching the stars were globe-like lamps, all of one color, all of one shape, which Marguerite had had swung amid the interlaced greenery of trees and vines:  as lanterns around the gray bark huts of slow-winged owls; as sun-tanned grapes under the arches of the vine-covered summer-house; as love’s lighthouses above the reefs of tumbling rose-bushes:  all to illumine the paths which led to nooks and seats.  For the night would be very warm; and then Marguerite—­but was she the only one?