ved, the smallest breach of rules, the least naughtiness or wilful act
of which she had been guilty; nay, she had never been able to rest till
she had poured out a confession, before evening prayer, of all that her
little heart told her was not perfectly right, to some one whom she
loved, and obtained full forgiveness. Night after night the
"Water-wagtail" had gone to sleep with a conscience as clear and as white
as the breast of her whitest dove, and the worst sin she had ever
committed during the day was some forbidden scramble, some dainty or,
more frequently, some rude and angry word.

But a change had first come over her after Orion's kiss in the
intoxicating perfume of the flowering trees; and almost every hour since
had roused her to new hopes and new views. It had never before occurred
to her to criticise or judge her mother; now she was constantly doing so.
The way in which Susannah had cut herself off from her neighbors in the
governor's house, to her daughter seemed perverse and in bad taste; and
the bitterly vindictive attacks on her old friends, which were constantly
on Susannah's lips, aggrieved the girl, and finally set her in opposition
to her mother, whose judgment had hitherto seemed to her infallible.
Thus, when the governor's house was closed against her, there was no one
in whom she cared to confide, for a barrier stood between her and Paula,
and she was painfully conscious of its height each time the wish to pass
it recurred to her mind. Paula was certainly "that other" of whom Orion
had spoken; when she had stolen away to see her in the evening after the
funeral, she had been prompted less by a burning wish to pour out her
heart to a sympathizing hearer, than by torturing curiosity mingled with
jealousy. She had crept through the hedge with a strangely-mixed feeling
of tender longing and sullen hatred; when they had met in the garden she
had at first given herself up to the full delight of being free to speak,
and of finding a listener in a woman so much her superior; but Paula's
reserved replies to her bold questioning had revived her feelings of envy
and grudge. Any one who did not hate Orion must, she was convinced, love
him.

Were they not perhaps already pledged to each other! Very likely Paula
had thought of her as merely a credulous child, and so had concealed the
fact!

This "very likely" was torture to her, and she was determined to try, at
any rate, to settle the doubt. She had an ally