id. "If I were in her place and anything
happened to her, I should never forgive myself."

"Trust Ida Slome to forgive herself for most anything," Aunt Maria
returned, bitterly. "But as far as that goes, I guess the child has
had full as good care here as she would have had with her ma."

"I guess so, too," said Eunice; "better--only I should never forgive
myself."

That was only a week before the graduation day, which was on a
Wednesday. It was a clear June day, with a sky of blue, veiled here
and there with wing-shaped clouds. It was quite warm. Evelyn dressed
herself very early. She was ready long before it was time to take the
car. Evelyn, in her white graduating dress, was fairly angelic.
Although she had lost so much flesh, it had not affected her beauty,
only made it more touching. Her articulations and bones were so
fairy-like and delicate that even with her transparent sleeved and
necked dress there were no unseemly protuberances. Her slenderness,
moreover, was not so apparent in her fluffy gown. Above her necklace
of pink corals her lovely face showed. It was full of a gentle and
uncomplaining melancholy, yet that day there was a tinge of hope in
it. The faintest and most appealing smile curved her lips. She looked
at everybody with a sort of wistful challenge. It was as if she said:
"After all, am I not pretty, and worthy of being loved? Am I not
worthy of being loved, even if I am not, and I have all my books in
my head, too?"

Maria had given her a bouquet of red roses. When Evelyn in her turn
came forward to read her essay, holding her red roses, with red roses
of excitement burning on her delicate cheeks, there was a low murmur
of admiration. Then it was that Maria, in her blue gown, seated among
the other teachers, caught the look on Wollaston Lee's face. It was
unmistakable. It was a look of the utmost love and longing and
admiration, the soul of the man, for the minute, was plainly to be
read. In a second, the look was gone, but Maria had seen. "He is in
love with her," she told herself, "only he is so honorable that he
chokes the love back." Maria turned very pale, but she listened with
smiling lips to Evelyn's essay. It was very good, but not much beyond
the usual rate of such productions. Evelyn had nothing creative about
her, although she was even a brilliant scholar. But the charm of that
little flutelike voice, coming from that slight, white-clad beauty,
made even platitudes seem like someth