"I never understand you," she said, impatiently. "I thought you were beginning to take an interest in that young man. He seems to have been dangling about you a good deal lately." "Well, to tell the truth, I was beginning to like him a trifle, but this settles it," and she scornfully filliped the note she still held in her hand. "He does not know his own mind. He is as fickle as the wind. Really, I do not think I care to marry." "Child, I would like to see you with a husband and children of your own. The Gastonguays are dying out." "What does it matter who comes after us?" "Well, please yourself, I don't want to get rid of you," and Miss Gastonguay went thoughtfully to her own room. Chelda locked her door, picked a disfiguring thread off a delicately woven rose on the carpet, moved about the room with exceeding quietness and stealthiness, stopped occasionally before the dark reflection in her mirror, but in no way gave outward signs of any violent internal emotion. After a time she put her hand to her throat as if something choked her. A turn of her head had entangled a jewelled pin in the lace about her neck. With infinite patience she detached the pin, then standing with her eyes fastened on it as they had been fastened on Aurelia's face, she gently insinuated its point under the velvety olive skin of her wrist. One drop of blood came, then another and another, until finally, from the little slit that she continued lengthening, a soft continuous flow of crimson fell on the roses of the carpet. This was barbarous,--a lapse into the torture customs of her forefathers. It did not hurt her, but her feelings were too fine to permit the disfigurement of her carpet, and, getting a basin of water, she went on her knees and carefully removed the stain. Then walking back on her heels she gazed steadfastly at the reddened water. The towel fell from her hands, every muscle in her body relaxed. After the lapse of a few mesmerised minutes she fell heavily to the floor, her face turned up to the French cupids on her ceiling. Hour after hour she lay there. The wind blew in through an open window on her rigid limbs, occasionally a distant bell chimed the hours from the town, but she neither felt the wind nor heard the bell. She had not fainted. Her senses were painfully, acutely alive, yet she paid no heed to any of the sounds of the night, and only stirred when darkness passed away and morning came, and a knock at her door proclaimed the arrival of Prosperity on his tour of arousing the family and depositing the hot water pitchers outside their bedrooms.