mark disapproval or displeasure. Now it was always Juliana, so that Mrs. Moon seemed to be permanently displeased)—"whatever possessed you to make such an exhibition of yourself? (And will you draw your chair back—you're incommoding the cabinet.) I never saw anything so unsuitable and unbecoming in my life—at this hour of the day too. Why, you're just like a whirligig out of a pantomime. If you think you can carry off that kind of thing you're very much mistaken."

That did seem to be Miss Quincey's idea—to carry it off; to brazen it out; to sit down and read Browning as if there was nothing at all remarkable in her personal appearance.

"And to choose lilac of all things in the world! You never could stand that shade at the best of times. Lilac! Why, I declare if it isn't mauve-pink."

"Mauve-pink!" She had given voice to the fear that lay hidden in Miss Quincey's heart. A sensitive culprit caught in humiliating guilt could not look more cowed with self-consciousness than Miss Quincey at that word. Criminal and crime, Miss Quincey and her blouse, seemed linked in an awful bond of mutual abhorrence. The blouse shivered as Miss Quincey trembled in nervous agitation; as she went red and yellow by turns it paled and flushed its painful pink. They were blushing for each other. For it was mauve-pink; she could see that well enough now.