This was Axie’s explanation, which was wholly satisfactory, and as it was repeated with sundry additions, all in Queenie’s favor, she was indorsed at once, and had she chosen, she might have been a belle and headed every clique in the house. But Queenie was far too sad and her heart was too full of pain to care for flattery, and yet in a way she was interested and amused with what she saw of life at the St. James, and liked to sit alone by herself in a quiet corner of the great parlor and watch the people around her—the devotees of whist, who night after night sat at the same table, with the same people, and usually with the same result; the dancers, who occasionally varied the monotony with a quadrille or a waltz; and the knots of lookers-on gathered here and there in groups, and whispering their confidences to each other. It was all very new and very strange to Queenie, who had never seen anything like it, and she was beginning to forget in part her great sorrow in the scenes around her, when an unexpected arrival brought the past back to her in all its bitterness, and made her shrink more than ever from intercourse with strangers. This arrival was none other than that of Mistress Anna Rossiter, _nee_ Anna Ferguson, who had been three weeks a bride, and after _doing_ Washington, as she expressed it, had resolved to see a little of Florida life before the season was fairly over and the Northerners gone home. Miss Anna’s wedding had been a very quiet one, owing to poor Phil’s recent death, and only a few of the villagers had been honored with an invitation; but those so honored had been among the first in town—the Grangers, and Markhams, and Marshalls, against whom Anna had once rebelled so hotly because of fancied slights and indignities. It was now her turn to hold up her head, she thought: she was to be Mrs. Lord Seymour Rossiter, with a house in New York, and another on the Hudson if she liked. She was to have a maid, and diamonds, and her carriage, and servants in livery, for she liked those long coats and yellow boots, she said, and she meant to have her women servants wear caps, as she was told they did abroad. Anna was very happy. The old days of dressmaking and drudgery were over. No more pricked red fingers for her, no more bundles to be carried home to those who bade her ring at the side instead of the front door.