After the betrothal there was no happier man in Paris than Paul Ralston. He went everywhere Clarice wished to go, from the Grand Opera House to the Champs d’Elysees, where Jenny Mills delighted a not very select audience with her dancing. He accompanied her and her mother on their shopping expeditions for the bridal trousseau, most of which was to be made in Paris. It was on one of these occasions that he thought of Miss Hansford and suggested getting her a dress to wear to his wedding. “Do you propose to invite _her_?” Clarice asked, in some surprise, and he replied, “Certainly. She is one of my best friends. I wouldn’t slight her for the world.” “An announcing card will answer every purpose,” was Clarice’s next remark. Paul did not think it would. He wanted Miss Hansford to see him married. It would please her, and she had always been so kind to him. Clarice made a little grimace and said, “Let’s get her a dress, then, by all means. I want her to look decent if she comes,” and she selected the grey silk at his request, and made some additions to it in the way of laces and gloves, which last he forgot to take with him when he carried the dress to Miss Hansford. Clarice could scarcely have given any good reason for her antipathy to Miss Hansford except on general principles. She did not like Oak City and would never have come there from choice. It was not gay enough, nor fashionable enough to suit her. She called Miss Hansford a dowdy and a crank and included her in the category of second-class people who were no society for her. All this was repeated to Miss Hansford by her colored factotum, Martha Ann, who had taken Sally’s place at the Percys, and, after a few weeks, had left because she was not allowed to entertain her young men on the steps of the dining room, and had been told she talked and laughed too loud for a servant. Her next place was with Miss Hansford, to whom she retailed all she had heard and seen at Mrs. Percy’s, with many additions. Miss Hansford knew it was not good form to listen to the gossip, but when she became mixed with it curiosity overcame her sense of propriety, and she not only listened but questioned, while her wrath waxed hotter and hotter with what she heard. “Said you’s a second-class and a crank, and she didn’t see why Miss Ralston could make so much of you,” was Martha Ann’s last item, and then Miss Hansford, who had never forgotten Mrs. Percy’s slight in not returning her call, lost her temper entirely. She had heard herself called a crank before, and, looking in the dictionary, had found so many definitions to the word that she felt a little uncertain as to which applied to herself. “I s’pose I am queer and different from folks like the Percys, and I thank the Lord I am,” she thought, but to the “second-class” she objected.