the spear rising triumphantly
out of the ruby heart, she began to understand. A feeling of awe crept
over her, that she, little Mary Ware, should be hearing the same call
that Edryn heard. Somewhere, some day, some great achievement awaited
her. Now she knew that that was why she had been born into the world.
That was why, too, that Providence had opened a way for her to come to
Warwick Hall, that she might learn what was to be "the North-star of her
great ambition," and how "to keep the compass needle of her soul" ever
true to it.

Clasping her hands together as reverently and humbly as if she were
before an altar, she looked up at the ruby heart, her face all alight,
whispering Edryn's answer:

"'Tis the King's call! O list!
O heart and hand of mine keep tryst--
Keep tryst or die!"

The music stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and all a-tingle with the
exalted mood in which it left her, she ran up to her room and knelt by
the window, looking out into the dusk with eager shining eyes. As yet it
was all vague and shadowy, that mysterious future which awaited her.
With what great duty to the universe she was to keep tryst she did not
know; but whatever it was she would do it at any cost. To callow wings
no flight is too high to attempt. At sixteen all things are possible.

All girls of Mary's imaginative impulsive temperament have had such
moments, under the spell of some unusual inspiration, but their dreams
are apt to vanish at contact with the earth again, as suddenly as a
bubble breaks when some material object touches it. But with Mary the
vision stayed. True, it had to retire into the background when dinner
was announced, and her over-weening curiosity brought her down to the
consideration of common everyday affairs, but she did not lose the sense
of having been set apart in some way by that supreme moment on the
stair. To the world she might be only an ordinary little Freshman, but
inwardly she knew she was a sort of Joan of Arc, called and consecrated
to some high destiny.

She went down to dinner in an uplifted frame of mind that made her
passage down the long dining room in the wake of Madam and the few
returned teachers a veritable march of triumph. The feeling that the
curtain had gone up on an interesting play in which she was chief actor
came back stronger than ever when she took her seat in one of the
high-backed ebony chairs, with the carved griffins atop, and unfolded
her na