"Then tell her," assented Charlotte impatiently, "but don't tell her until afterwards."
It was Sheila's own method of that earlier time—a middle path between conscience and desire, and lightly skirting both.
"I might do that," she remarked thoughtfully. "If I told her—even afterwards—it wouldn't be quite so wicked. And I want to wear the frock dreadfully!"
"Just tell her as if it's nothing at all," advised Charlotte cleverly, "as if we never even thought of it until after you got here that evening. Then she won't mind it a bit. You'll see she won't!"
"Yes, she will. She won't like my wearing your clothes. She won't think it's nice. And when I tell, I'll tell the whole thing—the way it really happened. But"—and Sheila's full-lipped, generous mouth straightened into a thin line of resolution—"I'm going to do it anyway, Charlotte!"
Three days intervened before the party, and they were not happy days for Sheila. Her sense of guilt depressed every moment of the time, especially when she was in Mrs. Caldwell's trusting presence. For Sheila was not equipped by nature to sin comfortably.
But when the eventful night arrived, and she beheld herself at last in Charlotte's blue silk mull, with its short sleeves and little round neck frothy with lace, and its soft skirt falling to her very feet, she forgot every scruple that had been sacrificed to that enchanting end.
Charlotte, gay as a bright-hued bird with her blue eyes and yellow hair and rose-colored gown, and her mother and young Mrs. Bailey, her married sister, all stood around Sheila in an admiring circle, every now and then breaking out anew into delighted exclamations over their transformed Cinderella.
"Isn't she too sweet?"
"And look at her eyes—as blue as Charlotte's, aren't they?"