Isabel was puzzled. She knew some money had been sent for Mabel to buy new dresses, and why they were not bought, she could not tell. All thought of the dressmaker's bill that had been such a haunting care to Mabel the last few weeks had entirely passed from her mind. Mabel had sent it to her mother, she supposed, and it had been paid long ago, and why she should prefer to wear dull dowdy dresses in the bright spring weather, when she had the money to buy others, was a riddle she could not solve. One morning, after Mabel had left the breakfast-room, Julia made some remark about her cousin wearing her winter dresses still, and Isabel hastened to defend her. "She doesn't think so much about dress as you and I, Julia," she said laughingly. "Oh, I know better than that," retorted her sister. "Look at that new evening dress she bought. I am sure she could have done without it. The blue silk she brought with her would have done very well for that party." Julia had made this remark before, when the preparations for the party were being discussed. And Mabel had overheard it, and it was this more than anything else had made her decide to have the new dress, and taste the bitterness of being in debt. —————— CHAPTER VII. EXPLANATIONS. "NOW, Mr. Randolph, you must interfere. I cannot let this go on any longer!" burst forth his wife one morning as he rose from the breakfast-table. The girls had left the room, and husband and wife were alone, and Mr. Randolph said rather sharply: "What are you worrying yourself about now, Clara? Isabel is no worse, is she?"—for Isabel's cough had been very troublesome this spring. "It isn't Isabel at all, but your niece." Mrs. Randolph always said "your niece" when she was angry with Mabel, and so her husband was quite prepared for some complaint. "What is it now?" he asked. "Can't you see she is quite a disgrace to us, going about in dowdy winter clothes such weather as this? If her name wasn't Randolph, so that everybody had to know she was a relation, it would not matter so much." "Would it make the clothes lighter then?" asked her husband in a mocking tone. "No! But she would not be able to annoy us so much. It is only done to annoy us, I know," added the lady, "for Isabel says she has got the money to buy new things." Mr. Randolph looked puzzled. "My dear, I wish you had tried to make things more comfortable for the girl," he said in a vexed tone. "More comfortable!" repeated the lady. "Why, she is treated like my own daughters. What more would you have?" "Well, my dear, I don't know how it is; I don't understand woman's ways altogether, but I'm not blind. And I can see that you and Julia are somehow always at enmity with Mabel. It makes me very uncomfortable, I can tell you, sometimes. And if it was not that Isabel had grown very fond of her cousin, so that I cannot think it is wholly her fault, I would send her home at once."