delighted?" inquired Miss Mary. "Is it at the
coming ball?"

Cara pouted her scarlet lips contemptuously, and answered:

"The ball! What do I care? I do not want the ball! Mamma and Ira
do not want it either, so I will go to-day and beg father to
defer it. But I am delighted this morning! The sun is so
pleasant! Do you see how the rays quiver; how they slip among the
leaves, like little snakes, or spring, like golden butterflies?"

With outstretched finger she showed the play of sunrays among the
clumps of green at the windows; herself in white muslin which
covered her slender neck and childish breast, and with naked
arms, she might remind one of a butterfly escaping from the
chrysalis of childhood.

In the evening (of that day) Cara circled about the room; her
mouth filled with historical names, and lines of poetry, with
which she had been occupied all day. Finally, she caught Puffie
in her arms, and, courtesying so low before Miss Mary that she
touched the floor, announced that she was going to her father.
From time immemorial she had not talked with him a moment.
Sometimes he was going out, or had not the time. But to-day she
would watch him, she would wait till all his business was
finished, all his guests gone; she would seize her father and
bring him to her mother's study. Miss Mary would go there;
perhaps Maryan would be there too.

Her idyllic heart, like a bird in a grove, was eternally dreaming
of quiet retreats, of confidential talks, of the attachment of
hearts and the pressure of hands. Her picture of the Anglican
rectory taken from Miss Mary's narrative, and situated in a grove
of old oaks, smiled at her like a bit of Paradise. "But mamma's
study is so quiet, and full of fragrant flowers--"

An hour had passed since she had skipped away with Puffie in her
arms, and with the reflection of a bit of Paradise in her eyes.
Miss Mary felt alarmed. For some time she had felt continual
alarm. She observed carefully the change taking place in Cara's
disposition, and discovered in it causes for anxiety. But she
could do nothing. While she was friendly to the family to which
fate had brought her, and while she experienced from it kindness
mingled with respect, it was to her a stranger. She observed
everything, and said nothing. She strove, more and more, to be
inseparable from Cara, and to turn her attention toward things of
remote interest. That was a splendid mansion, but terrors were
roaming around in it