Thus she saw him, glancing out again, once more, when inside the store. And through all the anguish of the moment—for she was in a dire strait—she felt a faint pang that she should have been rude to this kind stranger. In a feeble way she wondered, as they say condemned criminals wonder at street sights on the way to the gallows, what he was thinking of. But had he spoken his thought aloud she had not been the wiser, since he was simply saying softly to himself, “Well, wouldn’t it kill you dead!” Miss Abbie stopped at the glove-counter to buy a pair of gloves. As she walked away she heard distinctly one shop-girl’s sigh and exclamation to the other, “My, I wish I was her!” A kind of quiver stirred Miss Abbie’s faded cold face. Her dark gray eyes recoiled sidewise; then she stiffened from head to heel and passed out of the store. To a casual observer she looked annoyed; in reality she was both miserable and humiliated. And once back in the shelter of the brougham her inward torment showed plainly in her face. Abigail Courtlandt was the second daughter of the house; never so admired as Mabel, the oldest, who died, or Margaret, the youngest, who married Judge Etheridge, and was now a widow, living with her widowed mother. Abigail had neither the soft Hayward loveliness of Mabel and her mother, nor the haughty beauty of Margaret, who was all a Courtlandt, yet she was not uncomely. If her chin was too long, her forehead too high, her ears a trifle too large, to offset these defects she had a skin of exquisite texture, pale and clear, white teeth, and beautiful black brows.