The Fruit of the Tree

Justin

ghts and hard edges with the white-and-gold angularities of the best furniture, cast a rebuking eye on her frie

e of Miss Brent had been the signal for renewing an argu

, you'd volunteered for that bad surgical case in the Hope Hospital. But now that you've come back for a rest and a change I can't imagine why you per

rose in place, turned from her

to none?" She passed a last light touch over the flowers, and crossin

Isn't it better than to have other people take it for me?" she replied, with an air of affront that expressed itself in a ruffling of her whole pret

pride rather resents being floated in on the

essel, behind her friend's back, was quickly reassured by the thought that Justine was only a hospital nurse, who had to work for her living, and had really never "been anywhere"; but when Miss Brent's verbal arrows were flying, it seemed somehow of more immediate consequence that she was fairly well-connected, and lived in New York. No one placed a higher value on the abstract qualities of wit and irony

; and this year, with the John Amhersts here, and all their party--that fascinating Mrs. Eustace Ansell, and Mrs. Amherst's fath

against Hanaford. For my part, I know too little of it to have formed any opinion; but whatever it may have to

I don't like those dark lines under your eyes; but Westy Gaines told me yesterday that he thoug

there's every promise of my getting handsomer every day if somebody doesn't soon arrest t

those imponderable bodies that seem a mere pinch of matter shot through with light and colour. Though she did not flush easily, auroral lights ran under her clear skin, were lost in the shadows of her hair, and broke again in her eyes; and her voice seemed to

ess in the girl's voice. "Are you very tired, dear

oven between Mrs. Dressel's plump fingers. Seated thus, with hollowed shoulders and brooding head, she might have figured a young sibyl bowed abov

nt--it seems to go to the roots of the world. You know it was always the imaginative side of my work that helped me over the ugly details--the pity and beauty that disinfected the physical horror; but now that feeling is lost, and only the

ildered Effie, and flinging up her arms again,

den-party!" And caught in the whirlwind of her friend's incomprehensible mirth, she still persisted, as she ducked her bl

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or a feather than the subtler influence of word and look; and her face and figure were so new to the advantages of dress that, at four-and-twenty, she still produced the effect of a young gir

he quaint habit of half-loud soliloquy. "Fine feathers, Justine!" she laughed back at her laughing image. "You look like a phoe

But those memories were after all less dear to Justine than the grey years following, when, growing up, she had helped to clear a space in the wilderness for their tiny hearth-fire, when her own efforts had fed the flame and roofed it in from the weather. A great heat, kindl

her mere bundles of disintegrating matter, and she shrank from physical pain with a distaste the deeper because, mechanically, she could not help working on to relieve it. Gradually her sound nature passed out of this morbid phase, and sh

en a corner of life's veil! Now and then, when she felt her youth flame through the sheath of dullness which was gradually enclosing it, she rebelled at the conditions that tied a spirit like hers to its monotonous task, while o

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st, and bestowing on her brilliant person the last anxious

xclaimed, generously transferring her self-approval to Justine; and adding

ss Brent rejoined, ignoring t

ine--I wish you'd tell me! You say you hate the life you

d theatrical, had it not been a part of the ceaseless dramatic play of her flexible

ure of

ight not always be a littl

t do you mean, Justine? My c

as Mrs. Dressel bent on her a brow of unenlightenment--"Well, it doesn't matter: I only meant that I've always been afraid good clothes m

she continued--"how abo

brightened into immediate att

tant manager three years ago, at the Hope Hospital, and he was starting a ver

man as Mrs. Westmore. Of course she would never let any one see that she's not perfectly happy; but I'm told he has given them all a great deal of trouble by interfering in the management of the m

"But if Mrs. Amherst is really the Bessy Langhope I us

ement. "It's such a coincidence that you should have known her too! Was she alwa

oment. She was always the dearest little chameleon in the world, taking everybody's colour in the most flattering way, and giving back, I must say, a most charming reflection--if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor; but when

onable complacency that one of the disadvantages of being clever was that it tempted one to

of the kindly and prosperous Dressels. Effie Dressel, the daughter of a cousin of Mrs. Brent's, had obscurely but safely allied herself with the heavy blond young man who was to succeed his father as President of the Union Bank, and who was already regarded by the "solid business interests" of Hanaford as possessing talents likely to carry him far in the development of the paternal fortunes. Harry Dressel's honest countenance gave no evidence of peculiar astuteness, and he was in fact rather the product of special conditions than of an irresistible bent. He had the sound Saxon love of games, and the most interesting game he had ever been taught was "business." He was a simple domestic being, and according to Hanaford standards the most obvio

had been chiefly peopled by the dull or the crude, and, hemmed in between the two, she had created for herself an inner kingdom where the fastidiousness she had to set aside in her outward relations recovered its full sway. There must be a

al Hanaford was of course to be found at the Gaines entertainments. It presented itself, however, in the rich June afternoon, on the long shadows of the well-kept lawn, and among the paths of the rose-garden, in its most amiable aspect; and to Justine, wearied by habitual contact with ugliness and suffering, th