gue of
receiving company, and playing a becoming part in the academical
gaieties with which the summer term at St. Ambrose's closes, in order
to speak encouraging words to the poor crestfallen child. Miss
Vanhansen implored May to cross the herring-pond at her expense, and
have a good time among the Barbarian's relations in Ol' Virginny and
Kentuck. The girl who had played Alcestis wanted to inaugurate a
reading-party in which May should be coached all round every day.
Failing this, the same adventurous spirit would get up a series of
Greek plays in London drawing-rooms, with Miss Millar's assistance;
and so far as she herself was concerned, she would never be contented
till Miss Millar played Admetus to her Alcestis. A large deputation of
blue-stockinged maidens from Thirlwall Hall escorted May to the
railway station, and more than one was relieved to find that she was
going first to join her sisters in London instead of carrying the
mortification of her failure straight to her country-town home.

It might be the deferring of an ordeal, and yet it was with a white
face, as abashed and well-nigh as scared as if she had committed a
crime, that May awaited Annie in the drawing-room to which the
probationers' friends were free at St. Ebbe's. The consciousness had
come too late of having wasted the little money her father had to spare
on sentimental self-indulgence and the gratification of her own feelings
instead of employing it as it was meant to be employed, in controlling
herself and doing her duty, so as to acquire fitting arms for the battle
of life.

It was this horrible comprehension which made her wistful eyes grow
distended and fixed in their sense of guilt and disgrace. She might have
committed a forgery, and be come to tell Annie what she had done. May
was essentially one-idea'd at this period of her life, and she had dwelt
on the fact of her failure and exaggerated its importance, like the most
egotistical of human beings, till it filled her imagination and blotted
out every other consideration.

Annie, in the full career of a busy professional morning, snatched a
moment between two important engagements to see her sister.

May looked with imploring, fascinated eyes at Annie in her nurse's gown
and cap. The younger girl had some faint inkling of Annie's earlier
experience in the life of an hospital; yet there she was as fresh and
fair and bright as ever--a thousand times cooler and happier-looking
than her