"IT is quite true, Maggie," said Nancy Banister. "It is about the auction. Yes, there is no doubt about that. What possessed you to go?"

Maggie Oliphant was standing in the center of her own room with an open letter in her hand. Nancy was reading it over her shoulder:

    KATHARINE HALL,

    "Dec. 2.

    "Miss Eccleston and Miss Heath request Miss Oliphant and Miss Peel to present themselves in Miss Eccleston's private sitting-room this evening at seven o'clock."

"That is all," said Maggie. "It sounds as solemn and unfriendly as if one were about to be tried for some capital offense."

"It's the auction, of course," repeated Nancy. "Those girls thought they had kept it so quiet, but some one must have 'peached,' I suppose, to curry favor. Whatever made you go, Maggie? You know you have never mixed yourself up with that Day, and Merton, and Marsh set. As to that poor Polly Singleton, there's no harm in her, but she's a perfect madcap. What could have possessed you to go?"

"My evil genius," repeated Maggie in a gloomy tone. "You don't suppose I wished to be there, Nancy; but that horrid little Merton girl said something taunting, and then I forgot myself. Oh, dear, Nancy! what shall I ever do with that other self of mine? It will ruin me in the end. It gets stronger every day."

Maggie sat down on the sofa. Nancy suddenly knelt by her side.

"Dear Meg," she said caressingly, "you're the noblest, and the sweetest, and the most beautiful girl at St. Benet's! Why can't you live up to your true self?"

"There are two selfs in me," replied Maggie. "And if one even approaches the faintest semblance of angel-hood, the other is black as pitch. There, it only wastes time to talk the thing over. I'm in for the sort of scrape I hate most. See, Nancy, I bought this at the auction."

She opened her wardrobe, and taking out Polly Singleton's magnificent eighty-guinea sealskin jacket, slipped it on.

"Don't I look superb?" said Maggie. She shut the wardrobe-door and surveyed herself in its long glass. Brown was Maggie Oliphant's color. It harmonized with the soft tints of her delicately rounded face, with the rich color in her hair, with the light in her eyes. It added to all these charms, softening them, giving to them a more perfect luster.

"Oh, Maggie!" said Nancy, clasping her hands, "you ought always to be dressed as you are now."

Maggie dropped her arms suddenly to her sides. The jacket, a little too large for her, slid off her shoulders and lay in a heap on the floor.

"What?" she said suddenly. "Am I never to show my true and real self? Am I always to be disguised in sham beauty and sham goodness? Oh, Nancy, Nancy! if there is a creature I hate— I hate— her name is Maggie Oliphant!"

Nancy picked up the sealskin jacket and put it back into the wardrobe.

"I am sorry you went to the auction, Maggie," she repeated, "and I'm sorry still to find you bought poor Polly Singleton's sealskin. Well, it's done now, and we have to consider how to get you out of this scrape.

There's no time for you to indulge in that morbid talk of yours to-day, Maggie, darling. Let us consider what's best to be done."

"Nothing," retorted Maggie. "I shall simply go to Miss Heath and Miss Eccleston and tell them the truth. There's nothing else to be done. No hope whatever of getting out of the affair. I went to Polly Singleton's auction because Rosalind Merton raised the demon in me. I tried to become the possessor of the sealskin jacket because her heart was set on it. I won an eighty-guinea jacket for ten guineas. You see how ignoble my motives were, also how unworthy the results. I did worse even than that— for I will out with the truth to you, Nancy— I revenged myself still further upon that spiteful little gnat, Rosalind, and raised the price of her coveted coral to such an extent that I know by her face she is pounds in debt for it. Now, my dear, what have you to say to me? Nothing good, I know that. Let me read Aristotle for the next hour just to calm my mind."

Maggie turned away, seated herself by her writing bureau and tried to lose both the past and the present in her beloved Greek.

"She will do it, too," whispered Nancy as she left the room. "No one ever was made quite like Maggie. She can feel tortures and yet the next moment she can be in ecstasy. She is so tantalizing that at tim............