the past, no matter how bad she might have
been, Miss Asenath had always loved and wanted Arethusa to come and
snuggle up to her that the sorrow might be comforted into nothing. No
childish disgrace of former years had ever been black enough to change
her feeling for the culprit.

Arethusa clung to the thought of Miss Asenath.

But lacking her right at this moment, she continued to sit on the floor
at Elinor's feet, and Elinor's kind hand lovingly patted her back into
a certain semblance of composure. George stood disapprovingly over by
the pantry door. There were times for everything, considered George,
and any mealtime was the time to be eating. An excellent lunch was
getting cold while Miss Arethusa sat on the floor; good food was being
wasted.

"Miss Arethusa's soup will be quite cold," he suggested, after a few
moments. George was an old family servant, and he had Certain
Privileges. "Shall I bring another plate?"

"So it is!" exclaimed Elinor. "Yes, suppose you do, George. And,
Arethusa dear, you must really eat your lunch. Or breakfast, if you'd
rather call it what it is for you. I think it will make you feel much
better."

But Arethusa was all unresponsive to Elinor's tiny bit of friendly
levity also; her face was still sober. Yet she obediently got up from
the floor and seated herself at the table to eat the steaming plate of
soup which George immediately brought. And it went down her throat much
easier than she had imagined any sort of food would go; her throat had
seemed so contracted and full of painful lumps. As she ate, her healthy
young appetite began to assert itself, and she finished all of her soup
and made a very good meal besides. Some of the color came back into her
white face.

After lunch, Ross took her into the library with him. He could not bear
to see her so strange and quiet and he hated that curious look of
misery so foreign to her young eyes.

"Suppose you tell _me_ about it, daughter, couldn't you?" he asked,
when he had settled her comfortably in a big chair in front of the
fire and seated himself on the arm of it with one of his arms
protectingly across the back.

Arethusa wept stormily again.

But she could not possibly tell him about it.

For he was certain to be terribly angry with her, and no telling what
he might do to Mr. Bennet. Fathers surely had some way of punishing men
for Disgraced Daughters. It was not that any lingering affection for
Mr. Bennet made her thus an