why, oh, _why_ was she forced to
make such a choice? The other girls didn't have to. She had done no more
than they to bring about such a state of affairs.

They could go back to dear old Warwick Hall, but she would have to stay
behind. And she would always be behind, for, even if she went back with
them another year, it couldn't be the same. They would have done so much
in the meantime,--gone on so far ahead, made new friends and found new
interests, and she would have to drop back in the class below, and
never, never stand on the same footing with them again. It was so hard,
so cruel, that she should have to face a blighted life at only fifteen.

She unlocked the door presently at her mother's knock, but she didn't
want to be comforted. Nothing anybody could say could change things, she
sobbed, or make the disappointment any easier to bear. So Mrs. Sherman
wisely withdrew, and left her to fight it out alone.

The next time she peeped into the room, Lloyd was asleep, worn out with
the violence of her grief, so she tiptoed down-stairs, leaving the door
ajar behind her. The Colonel was pacing up and down the library.

"I declare I can't think of anything but that child's disappointment!"
he exclaimed, as she came in. "I can't read! I can't settle down to
anything. I have been trying to think of some pleasure we could give her
to make up for it in a way. A winter in Florida, maybe. Poor baby! if I
could only bear it for her, how glad I would be to do it!"

Mrs. Sherman picked up a bit of needlework from the table where she had
left it, and, sitting down by the window, began to hemstitch.

"I don't know, papa," she said, slowly, "but I'm beginning to fear that
we have done too much of that for Lloyd; smoothed the difficulties out
of her way too much; made things too easy. We've fairly held our arms
around her to shield her not only from harmful things, but from even
trifling unpleasantness. Maybe if she had had to face the smaller
disappointments that most children have to bear, the greater ones would
not seem so overwhelming. She could have met this more bravely."

The Colonel sniffed impatiently. "All foolishness, Elizabeth! All
foolishness! That may be the case with ordinary children, but not with
such a sweet, unspoiled nature as Lloyd's."

It was nearly dark when Lloyd wakened. She heard Kitty's voice down in
the hall, asking to see her, and Gay's exclamation of surprise and
regret at something her mother said