she could stay, that he would give her food and shelter and a hundred dollars a year on condition that she would take care of her own rooms—he could not afford another servant.

It was a strange household. Mrs. Suydam sat up in her room all day with her two little girls and in her passive, mechanical way, heard their lessons, or helped them make their clothes. Her brother she met only at the table. At those awful meals not a word was ever spoken. John, who had atrocious table manners, crunched his food audibly for a half-hour at breakfast, an hour and a half at dinner, and an hour at supper. Mrs. Suydam, whose one desire was to die, accepted the hint he unconsciously gave, and swallowed her food whole; if longevity and mastication were correlatives, it was a poor rule that would not work both ways. She died before the year was out; not of indigestion, however, but of relaxation from the terrible strain to which her delicate constitution had been subjected during the ten preceding years.

John Suydam had her put in the family vault, under St. Mark’s, as economically as possible, then groaned in spirit as he thought of the two children left on his hands. He soon discovered that they would give him no trouble. Bessie Suydam was a motherly child, and adversity had filled many of the little store-rooms in her brain with a fund of common-sense, which, in happier conditions, might have been carried by. She was sixteen and Hermia was nine. The day after the funeral she slipped into her mother’s place, and her little sister never missed the maternal care. Their life was monotonous. Bessie did not know her neighbors, although her grandparents and theirs had played together. When Mrs. Suydam had come to live under her brother-in-law’s roof, the neighborhood had put its dislike of John Suydam aside and called at once. It neither saw Mrs. Suydam, nor did its kindness ever receive the slightest notice; and, with a sigh of relief, it forgot both her and her children.

A few months after Mrs. Suydam’s death another slight change occurred in the household. A fourth mendicant relative appeared and asked for help. He was a distant cousin, and had been a schoolmate of John Suydam in that boyhood in which no one but himself believed. He had spent his life in the thankless treadmill of the teacher. Several years before, he had been pushed out of the mill by younger propounders of more fashionable methods, and after his savings were spent he had no resource but John Suydam.

Suydam treated him better than might have been expected. These two girls, whom a malignant fate had flung upon his protection, must be educated, and he was unwilling to incur the expenses of a school or governess. The advent of William Crosby laid the question at rest. John told him that he would give him a home and a hundred dollars a year if he would educate his nieces, and the old man was glad to consent.

The professor taught the girls conscientiously, and threw some sunshine into their lives. He took them for a long walk every day, and showed them all the libraries, the picture galleries, and the shops. In spite of the meanness of her garb, Bessie attracted some attention during these ramblings; she had the pretty American face, and the freshness of morning was in it. Poor Hermia, who obediently trotted behind, passed unnoticed. Nature, who had endowed the rest of her family so kindly—her father and mother had been two of the old dame’s proudest works—had passed her by in a fit of abstraction. Under her high, melancholy forehead and black, heavy brows, stared solemnly a pair of unmistakably green eyes—even that hypocrite Politeness would never name them gray. Her dull, uninteresting hair was brushed severely back and braided in a tight pig-tail; and her sallow cheeks were in painful contrast to the pink and white of her sister’s delicate skin. Her eyelashes were thick and black, and she had the small, admirably shaped hands and feet of the Suydams, but the general effect was unattractive. She was a cold, reserved child, and few people liked her.

The professor took the girls to the theater one night, and it was a memorable night in their lives. Each was in a fever of excitement, and each manifested it characteristically. Bessie’s cheeks were flushed to her eyelashes, and she jerked the buttons off both gloves. Her gray eyes shone and her pink lips were parted. People stared at her as she passed and wondered who she was. But for once in her life she was blind to admiration; she was going to see a play! Hermia was paler than ever and almost rigid. Her lips were firmly compressed, but her hands, in her little woolen gloves, were burning, and her eyes shone like a cat’s in the dark. They sat in the gallery, but they were in the front row, and as content as any jeweled dame in box or parquette.

The play was Monte Cristo, and what more was needed to perfect the delight of two girls confronted with stage illusion for the first time? Bessie laughed and wept, and rent her gloves to shreds with the vehemence of her applause. Hermia sat on the extreme edge of the seat, and neither laughed, wept, nor applauded. Her eyes, which never left the stage, grew bigger and bigger, her face paler, and her nostrils more tense.

After the play was over she did not utter a word until she got home; but the moment she reached the bedroom which the sisters shared in common she flung herself on the floor and shrieked for an hour. Bessie, who was much alarmed, dashed water over her, shook her, and finally picked her up and rocked her to sleep. The next morning Hermia was as calm as usual, but she developed, soon after, a habit of dreaming over her books which much perplexed her sister. Bessie dreamed a little too, but she always heard when she was spoken to, and Hermia did not.

One night, about three months after the visit to the theater, the girls were in their room preparing for bed. Hermia was sitting on the hearth-rug taking off her shoes, and Bessie was brushing her long hair before the glass and admiring the reflection of her pretty face.

“Bessie,” said Hermia, leaning back and clasping her hands about her knee, “what is your ambition in life?”

Bessie turned and stared down at the child, then blushed rosily. “I should like to have a nice, handsome husband and five beautiful children, all dressed in white with blue sashes. And I should like to have a pretty house on Fifth Avenue, and a carriage, and lots of novels. And I should like to go to Europe and see all the picture-galleries and churches.” She had been addressing herself in the glass, but she suddenly turned and looked down at Hermia.

“What is your ambition?” she asked.

“To be the most beautiful woman in the world!” exclaimed the child passionately.

Bessie sat down on a hassock. She felt but did not comprehend that agonized longing for the gift which nature had denied, and which woman holds most dear. She had always been pretty and was somewhat vain, but she had known little of the power of beauty, and power and uncomeliness alone teach a woman beauty’s value. But she was sympathetic, and she felt a vague pity for her sister. She thought it better, however, to improve the occasion.

“Beauty is nothing in itself,” she said, gently; “you must be good and clever, and then people will think——”

“Bessie,” interrupted Hermia, as if she had not heard, “do you think I will ever be pretty?”

Bessie hesitated. She was