Marie looked at her reflection again.
"Mother was very pretty, wasn't she?" she asked, and Miss Chester said: "Yes—she was, very pretty."
Marie sighed. "Of course, I can't be like her, then," she said, resignedly, and turned away.
Presently: "Is Chris coming these holidays?" she asked.
Miss Chester shook her head.
4 "He did not think so. He wrote that he should go to Scotland with the Knights."
Marie flushed. "I hate the Knights," she said pettishly. She had never seen them, but on principle she hated everyone and everything who took Christopher from her.
The following year she was sent to a finishing school in Paris, and while she was there her father died suddenly.
A wire came from England late one night and Marie was packed off home the following morning.
Her father's death was no great grief to her, though in a placid sort of way she had been fond of him. She had written to him regularly every Sunday, and was grateful for all that she knew he had done for her, but any deep love she might have borne for him had long ago gone to Chris. He was the beginning and end of her girlish dreams—the center of her whole life.