"No matter where I go my picture will be safe," was the flippant reply. And then the little council was broken up. Mrs. Brace went away to tell Mark of her fears. Mattie did not care to hear any more self-laudation, and Doris was left alone. Her face flushed, her pulse thrilled with gratified vanity; her heart seemed to expand with the keen, passionate sense of her own beauty. "If every earthly gift had been offered to me," Doris thought, "I should have chosen beauty. Rank and wealth are desirable; but without a face to charm they would be worth little, and beauty can win them even if one be born without them. I shall win them yet, because men cannot look at me without caring for me." And as she stood by the little rose-framed window there came to her a passionate longing that her beauty should be seen and known, that it should receive the homage and praise due to it. She, who was fair enough to win the admiration of a queen--she, on whose face royal eyes would dwell so often, and with such great delight! "I wonder," she thought to herself, "if any of the royal princes will be likely to see that picture. One of them might admire it, and then, if he saw me, admire me." There was no limit to her ambition, as there was none to her vanity. Had she been asked to share a throne, she would have consented as to a right. Vision after vision of dazzling delight came to her as she stood in the humble sitting-room that was the great delight of Mrs. Brace's heart; life flushed and thrilled in every vein. Doris held out her hands with a yearning cry for that which seemed so near, yet so far from her; the thousand vague possibilities of life rose before her. What could she not win with her beauty--what could not her beauty do for her. Then Mrs. Brace came in again on business cares intent, holding several pieces of calico in her hands. "Doris," she said, "I have been thinking that as you will perhaps soon be married to Earle, I may as well order a piece of gray calico for you when I order one for ourselves." Down went the brilliant vision! The queen who admired her face, the palace where her picture would hang, the glorious prospect, the dream that had no name, the sweet, wild fancies that had filled every nerve--they faded before those prosaic words like snow in the sun! "Marriage and gray calico! gray calico and Earle!" She turned with a quick, impatient gesture, almost fierce in its anger. "Oh, mother! you do say such absurd things," she said; "you annoy me." "Why, my dear? What have I said? You will want gray calico. You cannot be married from a respectable home like this, and not take a store of house linen with you." "House linen!" repeated Doris. "You are not talking to Mattie, mother."