She fairly fed upon her admiration of Alice Mendon that evening when she had stepped so nobly and tactfully into the rather frightful social breach and saved, if not wholly, the situation.
"Alice was such a dear," she thought, and the thought made her face fairly angelic.

Then she recalled how lovely Alice had looked, and her own mobile face took on unconsciously Alice's expression.
Standing before her looking-glass brushing out her hair, she saw reflected, not her own beautiful face between the lustrous folds, but Alice's.

Then she recalled with pride Margaret's imperturbability under such a trial.

"Nobody but Margaret could have carried off such an insult under her own roof too," she thought.
After she was in bed and her lamp blown out and the white moon-beams were entering her open windows like angels, she, after saying her prayers, thought of the three, Margaret, Alice, and Karl von Rosen.
Then suddenly a warm thrill passed over her long slender body but it seemed to have its starting point in her soul.

She saw very distinctly the young man's dark handsome face, but she thought, "How absurd of me, to see him so distinctly, as distinctly as I see Margaret and Alice, when I love them so much, and I scarcely know Mr.
von Rosen." Being brought up by one's imperious grandmother and two imperious aunts and being oneself naturally of an obedient disposition and of a slowly maturing temperament, tends to lengthen the long childhood of a girl.