"Once!" she said--and tossed it up again.
"Twice!"--and she tossed it higher. "Thrice--" Before she could catch
it for the third time, Norah seized her passionately by the arm, and the
parasol dropped to the ground between them.
"You are treating me heartlessly," she said. "For shame, Magdalen--for
shame!"
The irrepressible outburst of a reserved nature, forced into open
self-assertion in its own despite, is of all moral forces the hardest
to resist. Magdalen was startled into silence. For a moment, the two
sisters--so strangely dissimilar in person and character--faced one
another, without a word passing between them. For a moment the deep
brown eyes of the elder and the light gray eyes of the younger looked
into each other with steady, unyielding scrutiny on either side. Norah's
face was the first to change; Norah's head was the first to turn away.
She dropped her sister's arm in silence. Magdalen stooped and picked up
her parasol.
"I try to keep my temper," she said, "and you call me heartless for
doing it. You always were hard on me, and you always will be."
Norah clasped her trembling hands fast in each other. "Hard on you!" she
said, in low, mournful tones--and sighed bitterly.
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