and that he certainly would marry her--

"'Though mammy and daddy and all gang mad.'

"Mr. Rosslynn referred him to his father's letter and ordered him to
depart. And then the reverend gentleman went to his wife's room and
bitterly reproached her that her forward girl had been the cause of his
losing his pupil and eighty pounds a year.

"She told him that the fault was his own; that he should never have
received a young man as a resident pupil in the house where there was a
young girl.

"A fierce quarrel ensued, which was ended at last by the reverend
gentleman going out and banging the door behind him with a force that
shook the house, and in a state of mind that rendered him singularly
unfit to read the prayers for the sick beside the bed of a dying
parishioner to whom he was urgently summoned.

"Mrs. Rosslynn immediately hastened to wreak her vengeance on her
step-daughter. She set her teeth as she seized the unlucky girl, whom
she found at work in the kitchen, pushed her roughly on into the narrow
passage up the steep stairs and into the little back loft that the child
called her own bedroom.

"Here she took a firmer grip upon the girl, and with a dog whip that she
had hastily snatched from the hat rack in passing, she lashed the
hapless creature over back and shoulder.

"Ann never struggled or cried out, but held her tongue in fierce wrath
and stubborn endurance. Could that woman, the victim of all ungovernable
passions, have but known what she did, or foreseen its results!

"At last she ceased, pushed the bruised and wounded child away from her,
sank panting to a chair, and as soon as she recovered her breath, began
to insult and abuse the orphan child of her deceased husband, charging
her with disgracing the house by improper conduct, of which the girl had
never even dreamed; accusing her of causing the loss of their pupil and
the income derived from him, and reproaching her for making discord
between herself (Mrs. Rosslynn) and her husband.

"Ann replied by not one word.

"At length the maddened woman, having talked herself out of breath, got
up, left the room, and locked the door, not on her victim alone, but on
all the evil spirits she had raised from Tartarus and left with the
girl.

"Ann sank upon the bed, weeping, moaning, and grinding her teeth, her
body prostrated by pain, her soul filled with bitter wrath and scorn
toward one whom she should rather have been led to love and honor. In
t