CHAPTER I

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      Patricia Merrill, richly clad in gray duvetyne with moleskin trimmings, soft shod in gray suede boots, came slowly down the stairs from the third story, fastening her glove as she went. The top button was refractory and she paused in the middle of the stairs to give it her undivided attention. The light from the great ground-glass skylight overhead sifted down in a pool of brightness about her, and gave a vivid touch to the knot of coral velvet in her little moleskin toque. She was a pretty picture as she stood there with that drifting light about her like silver rain, and a wistful look in her eyes and about her lips.

      A voice sailed out like a dart from the half-open door at the foot of the stairs and stabbed her heart:

      "Has Patricia gone?”

      Why would her mother always call her "Patricia” in that formal, distant way, as if she were not intimate with her at all? And she always pronounced it so unlovingly, as if it were somehow her fault that she had such a long-stilted name. If they only would call her Patty as the girls used to do at school. How different it all was from what she had imagined it the last two or three years, this home-coming, with father far away in South America on business. He would have been at the station to meet her and called her his “little Pat!” A sudden mist grew in her eyes. Were mother and Evelyn always so much bound up in each other, and so distant? Their letters were that way, of course, but she had expected to find them different. It was all wrong keeping two sisters apart so long. If Evelyn hadn’t been strong enough for school and college they should have kept them both at home, and let them grow up together as sisters should.

      The pucker on Patty’s forehead deepened as the button grew more troublesome while these thoughts went through her mind like a flash, and then. Evelyn's voice rasped out:

      “Yes, she's gone at last, and I wish she'd never come back!”

      Patty stopped trying to button her glove and stood as if turned to ice, staring down the rich Persian carpeting of the stair to the half-open door of her mother's room, one hand fluttering convulsively to her throat, her eyes growing wide with horror and amazement.

      “Hush!” said the mother's voice sharply. "Are you perfectly certain she's gone?”

      “Yes, I am. I heard the door slam after her five minutes ago. She asked me to go with her. She fairly begged me. I suppose she thought she'd score a few more points against me! Oh, how I hate her! It isn't enough that she should turn the head of every man that comes to the house, but she had to set her cap for Hal Barron. She knew he belonged to me and that we were as good as engaged, yet she spends all her smiles on him every time he comes to the house, and this morning a great big box of American beauties comes with his card for ‘Miss Patty Merrill,’ if you please, Bah! I hate her little playful ways and her pussycat smile, and her calling herself ‘Patty.’ What right has he got to call her Patty, I'd like to know. She asked him to, of course! How else would he know? I think it is cruel to have her come home this winter just as things were going so nicely for me. I thought you promised to get father to send her away some-where? I don't see why she has to live here with us anyway! Didn't