, after an absence from home of only two weeks, should
have come in contact with that which seemed to change all her tastes and
views and plans, in regard to other matters, but which had actually
caused her to turn, with a steady and increasing determination, away
from the friend who had been her acknowledged protector and attendant
ever since she was a child, was a matter that he did not understand nor
approve.

"I am not a tyrant," he would say sullenly, when Mrs. Shipley and
himself talked the matter over; when she, with the characteristics of a
mother, even while her child annoyed and vexed her, yet struggled to
speak a word for her when a third person came in to blame. "I never
ordered Flossy to be so exceedingly intimate with Col. Baker that their
names have been coupled together ever since she was a baby. I never
insisted on her accepting his attentions on all occasions. It was her
own free will. I own that I was pleased with the inclination she
displayed, and did what I could to make the way pleasant for her, but
the thing is not of my planning. What I am displeased with is this
sudden change. There is no reason for it and no sense in it. It is just
a mere baby performance, a girlish freak, very unpleasant for him and
very disagreeable for us. The child ought not to be upheld in it."

So they did their best not to uphold her, and succeeded among them in
making her life very disagreeable to her.

The matter had culminated on the evening before the party in question.
Col. Baker, despite the persistent and patient efforts on Flossy's part
to show him the folly of his course, had insisted on obliging her to
speak a decided negative to his earnestly pressed question. The result
was, an unusually unpleasant domestic scene, and a general air of gloom
and unhappiness.

Mr. Shipley had not ordered his daughter to marry Col. Baker. He would
have been shocked beyond measure at such a proceeding on the part of a
father. But he made her so unhappy, with a sense of his disappointment
and disapproval, that more than once she sighed wearily, and wished in
her sad little heart that all this living was over.

Finally, they all went off to Mrs. Westervelt's party, and left her
alone. She had never felt so much alone in her life. The blessed
meetings, which had been such a wealth of delight and helpfulness to her
heart, were closed. The sweet, and holy, and elevating influences that
had surrounded her outer life for so long we