The rush of the season--Clematis is sufficiently sophisticated to know in what months propriety demands overworking one's dressmaker and milliner--was already over, and the little frock made rapid progress. Cheap and plain and simple as it was, its effect upon the wearer, even in its stages of incompleteness, was so striking that Persis sometimes forgot her official duty in the satisfaction of a long admiring stare. And probably in her sixteen years of existence, Diantha had never so nearly approximated all the cardinal virtues as in that idyllic week. She besieged Persis with offers of assistance, pleading for permission to pull basting threads or overcast seams. At home she was gentle, yielding, subdued. Her father, having learned through bitter experience how open to the attack of a million miseries love makes the heart, had resolved that fate should not again trick him. He had steeled himself against the appeal of Diantha's babyhood and had watched unmoved her precocious development. The mocking politeness which characterized his manner toward his wife was replaced in the case of the daughter by a distant formality. Yet now as Diantha went about the house with dreamy eyes and a half smile on her lips, there were times when the father looked at her almost wistfully and wondered of what she were thinking. With all due respect to the human will, we must acknowledge ourselves creatures of circumstance in no little degree, when two yards of lawn, retailing at twelve and a half cents, can prove so potent a factor in character and destiny. Diantha's mother might have prescribed quinine had she noted anything unusual in the girl's demeanor. But Annabel had reached a crucial stage in her flirtation with Thad West. The boy was developing a gratifying jealousy of the tenor singer in the Unitarian church choir and must be treated with a nice commingling of indulgence and severity to prevent his asserting himself in the crude masculine fashion, and either terminating the intimacy or else permanently getting the upper hand. Annabel was enjoying the crisis of the game and found it impossible to spare from her own absorbing interests a thought for such a minor consideration as Diantha's moods. Diantha anticipated the time when she was to call for her finished frock by more than an hour. "I know you're not ready yet," she apologized, as Persis looked at the clock. "But I thought I'd like to watch you work, if you don't mind." "Of course I don't mind, child. Just put those fashion books on the table and take the easy chair." Persis bent over the finishings of the little frock with a vague satisfaction in the nearness of the motionless figure. She was growing fond of Diantha, a not unnatural result of the adoring attention Diantha had lavished upon her for a week past. But because Persis was a woman with a living to make, and Diantha was a girl with a dream to be dreamed, scarcely a word was spoken till the last stitch was taken.