most decidedly that he would come, and a letter which she had received that morning made her desire his coming more than before.
“I have no patience with Isabel Vane,” the writer declared energetically. “She is so wrapped up in herself, and so insensitive, that delicacy is quite thrown away on her. She is one of those persons who think no one can talk except those who will interrupt and talk loudly, and so, with the greatest apparent unconsciousness, she monopolizes all the attention of their friends, and sets Bianca aside as if she were a nobody. It never occurs to her that a gentleman may admire her sister; and yet Bianca is very much admired, in an odd, provoking kind of way. Most people, you know, attend to the loudest talker; and in the presence of Isabel her sister was sometimes almost neglected, even by those who were constantly thinking of her. Anybody with two eyes could see that Louis Marion liked her, and I am sure she thought he did, and that there was a sort of tacit understanding between them. They didn’t talk much together, but I’ve seen them manage to be near each other, and where they could hear each other’s voices, and one of them never left the company without glancing back and receiving a glance in return. At length, I don’t know how it came about, but
Isabel seemed to take his attentions to herself, and may be she said something about him to Bianca. Then a coldness grew up between her and Marion, and a thousand little complications helped it on, and he began to absent himself from the house, and Bianca pretended not to see him unless he came to speak to her, and so they separated, and all in consequence of the stupid conceit of a girl whom I could shake with a good will.”
We need not quote the letter further, though the writer, in the fulness of her heart, added several pages of amplifications on the theme, all which the Signora had read and re-read.
Bianca was arranging books on the table when the photograph-book was opened. She continued her employment a few minutes; but when they approached the page where Louis Marion’s picture was she turned away, and when his name was mentioned she was leaning out of the window, much interested apparently, in something going on in the street.
“Whose photographs are these?” the Signora asked.
“Oh! they are all family friends,” was the reply. “I might say they are mine, for I asked for the most of them. Neither papa nor Bianca would have thought of it. But they belong to the firm.”
The Signora prided herself on being a rather exceptionally honest and straightforward woman; but at this moment a very complicated little plot was forming itself in her mind. She could guess with how tender an interest Bianca might regard this photograph, but how impossible it might be for her to show anything but the utmost indifference to it, and how, sometimes, it might be a pleasure to contemplate
it when she would not venture to do so. She could guess that it had been really given for her sake, though she had not been the one to ask for it, and what faint bloom of a downcast smile the gentleman might have seen in her face when it was put in its place.
“It is a darkish face, and the least in the world too small for the place,” the Signora said; “and so is this one next it.”