"Dear! dear! why need you take everything so seriously. There! why, it's half-past five! I'm really afraid to go home alone."
This was said as Arthur came within earshot, and, of course, he could only offer to go home with her, as she professed to be in too great a hurry to wait for Brenda and the rest of the party.
"But I will come back for you," murmured Arthur, as he turned away.
"No, thank you; you needn't," responded Brenda stiffly; "I have Ralph and Agnes, and really I don't care for any one else."
"Very well, then, we'll say good evening;" and the two young people went off after Belle had said her farewells very effusively to all in the studio.
As Brenda sat alone in a corner of the studio after the other guests had gone, she had an opportunity to think over the events of the past few years which some of Belle's sharp remarks had brought up. Ralph and Agnes were busy discussing designs for some picture-frames that he was to have made, and, sitting apart, Brenda in a rather unusual fit of reverie recalled some of the happenings of the six years since her cousin Julia had first come into her life. When first she learned that her orphan cousin, who was a year and a half her senior, was to become a member of her family, she had been far from pleased. Without feeling jealousy in its meanest form, she was annoyed lest the presence of Julia should interfere with her enjoyment of her little circle of intimate friends. Edith Blair, Nora Gostar, Belle Gregg and she had formed a pleasant circle, "The Four," into which she did not care to have a fifth enter. Consequently she was far from kind to her cousin, and would not invite her to the weekly meetings of the group, when they gathered at her house to work for a bazaar. Belle prompted and upheld Brenda in her attitude toward her cousin, while Nora and Edith were Julia's champions. Later Julia had an opportunity to behave very generously toward Brenda, and from that time the cousins were good friends. Belle's departure for boarding-school and her later absence in Washington had naturally lessened her intimacy with Brenda. Julia, after two years at Miss Crawdon's school with Brenda, had entered Radcliffe College, where in her four years' course she had made many friends, and had been graduated with honor. Belle, as well as Julia and Brenda, had been one of Miss South's pupils at Miss Crawdon's school, but she was one of the few with no interest whatever in the work begun at the Mansion—a work which the majority had been only too glad to help.
Belle had never shown herself to Brenda in so unlovely a light as on this particular afternoon at the studio. Yet she had often been far more disagreeable in her general way of expressing herself. The difference was that now Brenda herself had begun to look at life in a very different way. She had a higher standard; she understood and admired her cousin, even though in many ways they were very unlike, and Belle in contrast seemed particularly shallow.
Then, too, to be perfectly honest with herself, she had to admit that she was surprised and not pleased that Arthur Weston should show so much interest in the society of Belle.
"Come, Brenda, are you dreaming? We are ready to go home."
At the sound of her sister's voice Brenda rose quickly, and was ready with a laughing reply to one of her brother-in-law's witticisms.