Her eyes looking wildly out of her pallid face were still the beautiful, fawn-like eyes of the girl of twenty, and one felt in watching her that the old tragic shock had paralysed in them the terrible expression of that one moment until they wore forever the indignant and wounded look with which she had met the blow that destroyed her youth.
"Dear," said Laura, entering softly as she might have entered a death chamber.

"You will see Aunt Rosa and Aunt Sophy, will you not ?" Angela did not stop in her nervous walk, but when she reached the end of the long room she made a quick, feverish gesture, raising her hands to push back her beautiful loosened hair.

"I will do anything you wish, Laura, except see their husbands." "I've ceased to urge that, Aunt Angela, but your own sisters--" "Oh, I will see them," returned Angela, as if the words--as if any speech, in fact--were wrung from the cold reserve which had frozen her from head to foot.
Laura went up to her and, with the impassioned manner which she had inherited from her Southern mother, enclosed her in a warm and earnest embrace.

"My dear, my dear," she said, "Uncle Percival tells me that this is one of your bad days.

He says, poor man, that he went out and got you flowers." Angela yielded slowly, still without melting from her icy remoteness.
"They were tuberoses," she responded, in a voice which was in itself effectual comment.
"Tuberoses!" exclaimed Laura aghast, "when you can't even stand the scent of lilies.