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56 not given to sentimentalizing over old maids, but he found himself all at once tremendously interested in this middle-aged spinster, colorless and negative as she was.

"In the first place you must understand that we were utterly unlike, my sister and I. Perhaps that was why we were so devoted to each other. I cannot describe her, but she was beautiful, brilliant, self-assertive; while I have always been as you see me now." Her voice trembled at first but steadied as she went on. "She loved youth and could not endure the thought of coming age. That is why we have all stayed in town this summer; she was taking a special beauty treatment which required some weeks for its completion. I was the only one who knew this. We told the rest of the family that it was ill-health and she must remain in the city for electrical treatments. You can see how close we were to each other, Sergeant Odell. There is a little dressing-room off her bedroom—I will show it to you presently—which she had furnished as a sort of boudoir; and we sat there for hours together, I mending and she embroidering. Christine was always fond of bright colors."

Miss Meade's voice died away in retrospection, but she recovered herself and continued: "Her embroidery-basket was never taken out of that room, and on the morning when—when it happened we had been chatting and working for about an hour when suddenly she uttered a sharp exclamation and dropped the embroidery-frame in her lap. I supposed she had merely become impatient, and I did not even look up until she spoke. 'Oh, I've stuck my finger!' I can almost hear her say it now! As I told you, I got the witch hazel for her; but