And she looked at him with her shining eyes. “I love you,” she said—“even more than I did when I came. The happiest moment of my life will be when I can walk out of the church with you, and have nothing more to do with the world!” “Good-bye, Lady Sunshine!” he said. “Good-bye, Lady Sunshine!” BOOK III _Sylvia Loses_ § 1 Sylvia returned to New York, where she had some shopping to attend to, and where also Celeste was waiting for her, expecting to be taken to theatres, and treated to a new hat and some false curls and boxes of candy. Celeste had heard all about van Tuiver, it appeared, and was “thrilled to death”—her own phrase. There was no repressing her questions—“Is he nice, Sylvia?”—“What does he look like?”—and so on. Nor was there any concealing her surprise at Sylvia’s reticence and lack of interest in this subject. The elder sister got a sudden realization of the extent to which she had changed during this last couple of weeks. “They will call you an Anarchist at home,” Frank had predicted; and now how worldly and hard seemed Celeste to her—how shameful and cruel her absorption in all the snobbery of Miss Abercrombie’s! Could it be that she, Sylvia, had ever been so “thrilled to death” over millionaire beaux and millionairess’ millinery? Her sister had grown so in the few months that Sylvia hardly knew her; she had grown, not merely in body but in mind. So serene she was, so self-possessed, so perfectly certain about herself and her life! Such energy she had, such determination—how her sharp, black eyes sparkled with delight in the glories of this world! Sylvia found herself stealing glances at her during the matinee, and wondering if this could be “Little Sister”? Sylvia had dismissed her multimillionaire from her mind; but she was not to get rid of him as easily as that. (“He persists and persists,” Bates had said.) One afternoon, feeling tired, she sent her aunt forth to attend to some of the family commissions; when to her amazement there was sent up a note, written upon the hotel stationery, in the familiar square English handwriting. “My dear Miss Castleman,” it ran. “I know that you will be angry when you see I have followed you to New York. I can only plead with you to have pity upon me. You have put upon me a burden of contempt which I can simply not bear; if I cannot somehow manage to win your respect, I cannot live. I ask only for your respect, and will promise never to ask for anything else, nor to think of anything else. However bad I may be, surely you cannot deny me the hope of becoming better!” You see, it would have been hard for Sylvia to refuse the request. He struck the right chord when he asked for her pity, for she pitied all things that suffered—whether they deserved it or not.