“Bessie,” interrupted Hermia, as if she had not heard, “do you think I will ever be pretty?”
Bessie hesitated. She was very conscientious, but she was also very tender-hearted. For a moment there was a private battle, then conscience triumphed. “No,” she said, regretfully, “I am afraid you never will be, dear.”
She was looking unusually lovely herself as she spoke. Her shoulders were bare and her chemise had dropped low on her white bosom. Her eyes looked black in the lamp’s narrow light, and her soft, heavy hair tumbled about her flushed face and slender, shapely figure. Hermia gazed at her for a moment, and then with a suppressed cry sprang forward and tore her sharp nails across her sister’s cheek.
Bessie gave a shriek of pain and anger, and, catching the panting, struggling child, slapped her until her arm ached. “There!” she exclaimed, finally, shaking her sister until the child’s teeth clacked together, “you little tiger cat! You sha’n’t have any supper for a week.” Then she dropped Hermia suddenly and burst into tears. “Oh, it is dreadfully wicked to lose one’s temper like that; but my poor face!” She rubbed the tears from her eyes and, standing up, carefully examined her wounds in the glass. She heaved a sigh of relief; they were not very deep. She went to the washstand and bathed her face, then returned to her sister. Hermia stood on the hearth-rug. She had not moved since Bessie dropped her hands from her shoulders.
Bessie folded her arms magisterially and looked down upon the culprit, her delicate brows drawn together, her eyes as severe as those of an angel whose train has been stepped on. “Are you not sorry?” she demanded sternly.
Hermia gazed at her steadily for a moment. “Yes,” she said, finally, “I am sorry, and I’ll never get outside-mad again as long as I live. I’ve made a fool of myself.” Then she marched to the other side of the room and went to bed.
CHAPTER II.
JOHN SUYDAM GIVES HIS BLESSING.
One day a bank clerk came up to the quiet house with a message to John Suydam. As he was leaving he met Bessie in the hall. Each did what wiser heads had done before—they fell wildly and uncompromisingly in love at first sight. How Frank Mordaunt managed to find an excuse for speaking to her he never remembered, nor how he had been transported from the hall into the dingy old drawing-room. At the end of an hour he was still there, seated on a sofa of faded brocade, and looking into the softest eyes in the world.