She was still standing there when the maid called her to the telephone. It was Raleigh Peters on the wire, asking to take her to the dance that night. She accepted, but without enthusiasm. Where were the thrills she had expected to experience while receiving the homage paid a visiting girl? He was just a grocery clerk named Peters! Yes; Romance had died out in the Middle Ages... She felt very blase as she hung up the receiver. CHAPTER V. IN THE MANNER OF THE DUCHESS It was raining--a gentle, trickling summer rain, when, under a heap of magazines near a heavenly attic window, Missy and Tess came upon the paper-backed masterpieces of “The Duchess.” The volume Missy chanced first to select for reading was entitled “Airy Fairy Lilian.” The very first paragraph was arresting: Down the broad oak staircase--through the silent hall--into the drawing-room runs Lilian, singing as she goes. The room is deserted; through the half-closed blinds the glad sunshine is rushing, turning to gold all on which its soft touch lingers, and rendering the large, dull, handsome apartment almost comfortable... “Broad oak staircase”--“drawing-room”--“large, dull, handsome apartment”--oh, wonderful! Then on to the description of the alluring heroine: ... the face is more than pretty, it is lovely--the fair, sweet, childish face, framed in by its yellow hair; her great velvety eyes, now misty through vain longing, are blue as the skies above her; her nose is pure Greek; her forehead low, but broad, is partly shrouded by little wandering threads of gold that every now and then break loose from bondage, while her lashes, long and dark, curl upward from her eyes, as though hating to conceal the beauty of the exquisite azure within... There is a certain haughtiness about her that contrasts curiously but pleasantly with her youthful expression and laughing, kissable mouth. She is straight and lissome as a young ash tree; her hands and feet are small and well-shaped; in a word, she is chic from the crown of her fair head down to her little arched instep... Missy sighed; how wonderful it must be to be a creature so endowed by the gods! Missy--Melissa--now, at the advanced age of fifteen, had supposed she knew all the wonders of books. She had learned to read the Book of Life: its enchantments, so many and so varied in Cherryvale, had kept her big grey eyes wide with smiles or wonder or, just occasionally, darkened with the mystery of sorrow. There was the reiterant magic of greening spring; and the long, leisurely days of delicious summer; the companionship of a quaint and infinitely interesting baby brother, and of her own cat--majesty incarnate on four black legs; and then, just lately, this exciting new “best friend,” Tess O'Neill. Tess had recently moved to Cherryvale, and was “different”--different even from Kitty Allen, though Missy had suffered twinges about letting anyone displace Kitty. But--