o sixteen years, had
Lucy Merriman consciously done a wrong action. She had always been
obedient to her parents; she had always been careful and prim, and, as
she considered, thoughtful for others. She adored her father and mother.
She herself had been willing to sacrifice her position as a happy only
girl to become a member of the school, just to help her father out of
his difficulties, and to enable his health to be restored, and now she
was reprimanded because she could not see that wrong was right. What was
the matter with Rosamund? Who could consider her conduct in any other
but the one way? And yet here was Mr. Singleton inducing her father to
overlook her fault.

"I felt dissatisfied when father expelled her," thought the girl. "But
now he has taken her back again; and that awful ogre, that terror, has
come here. What does it all mean? It's enough to turn a good girl
naughty; that's all I've got to say."

There was a pretty sort of winter parlor where the girls always waited
until the meals were served. Lucy re-entered it now, and found most of
her companions waiting for her. She was scarcely there a moment before
the gong sounded, and at the same instant Rosamund, followed by Irene,
who was holding little Agnes's hand, entered the room.

Now, report had said a great deal in disfavor of Irene Ashleigh. She was
the queer girl who wore the unkempt red dress, who did the strangest,
wildest, maddest things, who terrified her governesses, who was cruel to
the servants, who made her mother's life one long misery. But report
had never mentioned that there was a charm in her wild face, in those
speaking eyes; and that the same little figure clothed in the simplest,
prettiest white could look almost angelic. No, angelic was hardly the
word. Perhaps charming suited her better. Beyond doubt she was
beautiful, with a willowy, wild grace which could not but arrest
attention, and all the other girls immediately owned to a sense of
inferiority in her presence. But Irene was so endowed with nature's
grace that she could not do an awkward thing; and then the child who
accompanied her, the small unimportant child, was as beautiful in her
way as Irene was in hers. So charming a pair did they make, those two,
each of them dressed in the purest white, that Rosamund, who was
considered quite the handsomest girl in the school, seemed to sink into
commonplace in comparison. But no one had time to make any remark.

Irene said lightly