ou get to be as old as I am you will believe more," said her
aunt Maria. "You will see that folks' selfishness hides the whole
world besides. Ida Slome is that kind."

"I think she is selfish myself," said Maria, "but I don't believe she
can leave Evelyn as long as that."

"Wait and see," said Aunt Maria, in much the same tone that her
brother had used towards his wife.

Maria Stillman was right. Evelyn remained in Amity. She outgrew
Maria's school, and attended the Normal School in Westbridge. Maria
herself outgrew her little Amity school, and obtained a position as
teacher in one of the departments of the Normal School, and still Ida
had not returned. She wrote often, and in nearly every letter spoke
of the probability of her speedy return, and in the same breath of
her precarious health. She could not, however, avoid telling of her
social triumphs in London. Ida was evidently having an aftermath of
youth in her splendid maturity. She was evidently flattered and
petted, and was thoroughly enjoying herself. Aunt Maria said she
guessed she would marry again.

"She's too old," said Maria.

"Wait till you're old yourself and you won't be so ready to judge,"
said her aunt. "I ain't so sure she won't."

Evelyn was a young lady, and was to graduate the next year, and still
her mother had not returned. She was the sweetest young creature in
the world at that time. She was such a beauty that people used to
turn and stare after her. Evelyn never seemed to notice it, but she
was quite conscious, in a happy, childlike fashion, of her beauty.
She resembled her mother to a certain extent, but she had nothing of
Ida's hardness. Where her mother froze, she flamed. Two-thirds of the
boys in the Normal School were madly in love with her, but Evelyn, in
spite of her temperament, was slow in development as to her emotions.
She was very childish, although she was full of enthusiasms and
nervous energy. Maria had long learned that when Evelyn told her she
was in love, as she frequently did, it did not in the least mean that
she was, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Evelyn was very
imaginative. She loved her dreams, and she often raised, as it were,
a radiance of rainbows about some boy of her acquaintance, but the
brightness vanished the instant the boy made advances. She had an
almost fierce virginity of spirit in spite of her loving heart. She
did not wish to touch her butterflies of life. She used to walk
between her aun