always provoke
discussion. Molly could not be overlooked, and when her mind and
feelings were excited, then she gave a strange impression of intense
vitality--not the pleasant overflow of animal spirits, but a suppressed,
yet untamed, vitality of a more mental, more dangerous kind. Her
movements were usually sudden, swift, and abrupt, yet there was in them
all a singular amount of expression, and, if Molly's keen grey eyes and
sensitive mouth did not convey the impression of a simple, or even of a
kindly nature, they gave suggestions of light and longing, hunger and
resolution.

To-day, the twenty-first birthday, was to be the first day of freedom,
the last of shackles and dulness and commonplace. It was to be a day of
speech and a day of revenge.

Molly was waiting now for Mrs. Carteret to come in and stand before her
and hear all she meant to say about the long, unholy deception that had
been put upon her. She was going to say good-bye now and be free.
Molly's money would now be her own, she could take it away and share it
with the deserted, misjudged mother. Nothing in all this was
melodramatic; it would have been but natural if the facts had been as
she supposed, only Molly made the little mistake of treating as facts
her carefully built-up fancies, her long, childish story of her own
life.

She was so absorbed that she hardly saw Mrs. Carteret come in and sit
down in her square, substantial way in a large arm-chair. Molly,
standing by the window knocking the tassel of the blind to and fro, was
breathing quickly. The older woman looked through some papers in her
hand, put some notes of orders for groceries on a table by her side, and
flattened out a long letter on foreign paper on her knee. She looked at
Molly a little nervously, with cold blue eyes over gold-rimmed
spectacles reposing on her well-shaped nose, and began:

"Now that you are of age I must----"

But Molly interrupted her. In a very low voice, speaking quickly with
little gasps of impatience at any hesitation in her own utterance,--

"Before you talk to me about the arrangements, I want to tell you that I
have made up my mind to leave here at once. I know it will be a relief
to you as well as to me. Any promise you made to my father is satisfied
now, and you cannot wish to keep me here. You have always been ashamed
of me, you have always disliked me, and you have always deceived me. I
knew all this time that my mother was alive, and you never sp