Mrs. MacGregor’s notions of dress and her own were asunder, even as the poles.  But here again that rigid duenna did her invaluable service, for if she didn’t look handsome in the clothes selected for her, she didn’t, as that lady said frankly, look vulgar in them.  No longer would you be liable to mistake her for somebody’s second-rate housemaid on her day out.  The simple diet and the inexorable regularity of her hours also told in her favor, although she herself wasn’t as yet aware of the change taking place.  Already you could tell that hers was a supple and shapely young body, with promise of a magnificent maturity; you glimpsed behind the fading freckles a skin like a water-lily for creamy whiteness; and that red hair of hers, worn without frizzings, began to take on a glossy, coppery luster.

That spring they moved into the new house.  It was so different from the average newly-rich American home that it moved even Mrs. MacGregor to praise.  Nancy thought it rather bare.  It hadn’t color enough, and there were but few pictures.  Yet the old rosewood and mahogany furniture pleased her.  She remembered that golden-oak, red-plush parlor at Baxter’s with a sort of wonder.  Why! she had thought that parlor handsome!  And now she was beginning to understand how hideous it had been.

She saw little of Mr. Champneys, who seemed to be plunged to the eyes in business.  Occasionally he appeared, looked at her searchingly, said a few words to her and Mrs. MacGregor, and vanished for another indefinite period.  Mr. Jason Vandervelde was almost a daily visitor when Mr. Champneys happened to be in the city.  At times Mr. Champneys went away, presumably to look after business interests, and Nancy thought that at such times the lawyer accompanied him.  She had no friends of her own age, and Mrs. MacGregor wasn’t, to say the least, companionable.  And the books she was compelled to read bored her to distraction.  She took it for granted they must be frightfully good, they were so frightfully dull!  The deadliest, dullest of all seemed to be reserved for Sunday.  She didn’t mind going to church; in church you could watch other people, even though Mrs. MacGregor sat rigidly erect by your side, and expected you to be able to find your place in a Book of Common Prayer entirely unfamiliar to you.  While she sat rapt during what you thought an unnecessarily long sermon, you could look about you slyly, and take note of the people within your immediate radius.

Nancy liked to observe the younger people.  Sometimes a bitter envy would almost choke her when she regarded some girl who was both pretty and prettily dressed, and, apparently, care-free and happy.  She watched the younger men stealthily.  Some of them pleased her; she would have liked to be admired by at least one of them, and she felt jealous of the fortunate young women singled out for their attentions.  Think of being pretty, and having beautiful clothes, and swell fellows like that in love with you!  That any one of these fine young men should cast a glance in her own direction never entered her mind.  No.  Loveliness and the affection and gaiety of youth were for others; for her—­Peter Champneys.  At that she fetched a deep sigh.  She always went home from church silent and subdued.  Mrs. MacGregor thought this a proper attitude of mind for the Sabbath.