however delightful you may have found it. As to the meeting, I went once
to that church to attend a prayer-meeting, too, and if there can be a
more refined and long drawn-out exhibition of dullness than was
presented to us there, I don't know where to look for it. I wonder why
the school-bell doesn't ring? It is three minutes past the time by my
watch."

Marion, without an attempt at a reply, turned and went swiftly down the
hall. She was glad that just then the tardy bell pealed forth, and that
she was obliged to go at once to the recitation-room and involve herself
in the intricacies of algebra.

Without this incentive to self-control, she felt that she would have
given way to the hot disappointed tears that were choking in her throat.
How sad her heart was as she sat there alone in the prayer-room. It was
early and but few were present. She had never felt so much alone. The
companionship which had been so close and so constant during the few
weeks past seemed suddenly to have been removed from her, and when she
essayed to go back to the old friend, she had stood coldly and
heartlessly--aye, worse than that--mockingly aloof.

She had overheard her, that very afternoon, detailing to one of the
under teachers, fragments of the conversation in the library. Marion's
heart was wounded to its very depths. Perhaps it is little wonder that
she had made no other attempt to secure company for the evening. There
were school-girls by the score that she might have asked; doubtless some
one of the number would accept her invitation, but she had not thought
so. She had shrunken from any other effort, in mortal terror.

"I am not fitted for such work," she said, in bitterness of soul; "not
even for _such_ work; what _can_ I do?" and then, despite the class, she
had brushed away a tear. So there she sat alone, till suddenly the door
opened with more force than usual, and closed with a little bang, and
Eurie Mitchell, with a face on which there glowed traces of excitement,
came like a whiff of wind and rustled into a seat beside her, alone like
herself.

"You here?" she said, and there was surprise in her whisper. "Thought
you would be late, and not be alone. I am glad of it--I mean I am almost
glad. Don't you think, Nell wouldn't come with me! I counted on him as a
matter of course, he is so obliging--always willing to take me wherever
I want to go, and often disarranging his own engagements so that I need
not be disappointed. I