nothing short of a tragic actress. Well, you ought
to be a happy woman."

"If clothes can make me happy, I suppose I shall
be," rejoined Laura. "Aunt Rosa has spared neither
her own strength nor Uncle Horace's money."

"That's because I love you better than my ease
and Horace loves you better than his foundling
hospital," replied Mrs. Payne.

Standing before the long mirror, Laura looked with
a frown at the sable coat, which gave her, as Gerty
had said, the air of a tragic actress. Her dark hair,
with its soft waves about the forehead, her brilliant
eyes, and the delicate poetic charm of her figure,
borrowed from the costly furs a distinction which
Gerty felt to be less that of style than of
personality.

"He will like me in this," she thought; and then
remembering the ermine wrap, which was becoming
also, she wondered if another woman would buy it,
if Kemper would see it at the opera, and if he would,
perhaps, admire it again as he had done that day.

"If he does I shall regret these though they were
so much more costly," she concluded, "and my
whole pleasure in them may be destroyed by a
chance remark which he will let fall." She under-
stood, all at once, the relentless tyranny which clothes
might acquire--the jealousy, the extravagance, the
feverish emulation, and the dislike which one woman
might feel for another who wore a better gown.
"Yet if I give my whole life to it there will always be
someone who is richer, who is better dressed and more
beautiful than I," she thought. "Though my
individuality wins to-day, to-morrow I shall meet a

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