ht to be. It was a very beautiful night, cold and clear and
starry. Arethusa put her head down on the window-sill and gazed up at
the stars. There were millions of them, and they all seemed to be
winking straight down at her just as sympathetically as possible. She
had always loved stars.

As she watched them, a sort of mist began obscuring them from her, and
so she brushed at her eyes to wipe it away, but it only seemed to keep
on growing to be more decided as a mist; and then it dissolved itself
into tears which fell thick and fast, hot tears which splashed on the
window-sill ... all because of Timothy's treatment of her on this
home-coming afternoon. Arethusa felt as if Timothy's friendship were
lost to her forever. Shamed and humiliated by Mr. Bennet, it had
remained for life in its cruelty to add this last blow. For unless his
feeling for her was absolutely changed, he would never have treated her
like this. Arethusa knew Timothy too well.

He had read Mr. Bennet correctly, she remembered now, thinking about
her best friend; or about the one who had always, till so recently,
been her best friend. He had called Mr. Bennet a "four-flusher." Would
that she had not been so blinded in her infatuation as not to heed this
warning! She could recall a great many times when Timothy had been
proved right in his deductions, which surely ought to have made her
place more value on the one concerning Mr. Bennet than she had.

Arethusa felt, just then, as if she would even rather that Miss Eliza
should know of that Episode at the January Cotillion than that Timothy
should know about it. Timothy's good opinion of her, suddenly, seemed
to Arethusa to possess a great charm.

After awhile she crept back into bed, her teeth chattering with the
cold, and cried herself to sleep.

In the days which followed Arethusa was kept very busy telling her
aunts all that she had done and seen in those three months she had been
away from them. And early in the next week, Elinor packed all of the
pretty evening frocks which Arethusa, for various scruples, had left
hanging in the closet of the green and white room in Lewisburg and sent
them down to the Farm, thinking that Arethusa had forgotten them, and
might like to have them. There was the Green Frock, and the one like
tinted autumn leaves, and the White Dress of her Very Own Party, and
many others besides, all reminders of evenings with Mr. Bennet. But
even so, Arethusa was glad to see them.