ome with Irma. I did so because I had the cloaks and hoods to
carry. Also I had something to tell her. It seemed something so
terrible, so mighty, so full of risk and danger that my heart failed me
in the mere thinking of it. I was to go away and leave her, for many
years, seeing her only at intervals. It seemed a thing more and more
impossible to be thought upon.

At the least I resolved to make myself out a martyr. It would be a blow
to Irma also, and the thought that she would feel it so almost made up
to me for my own pain, an ache which at the first moment had been of
the nature of a sudden and deadly fear.

Yet I might have saved myself the trouble. Irma looked upon the matter
in a very different light. She was not moved in the least.

"Yes, of course," she said, "you are only wasting your time here. Men
must go out and see things in the world, that afterwards they may do
things there. Here it is very well for us who have no friends and
nowhere else to go. But as soon as Louis is at school or has to leave
me--oh, it will happen in time, and I like looking forward--I shall go
too."

"But what could you do?" I cried in amazement, for such a thing as a
girl of her rank finding a place for herself was not dreamed of then.
Only such as my grandmother and Aunt Jen worked "in the sphere in which
Providence had placed them," as the minister said in his prayer.

"Never trouble your head," said Irma, "there never was a Maitland yet
but gat his own will till he met with a Maitland to counter him!"

"Lalor!" I suggested. At the name she twisted her face into an
expression of great scorn.

"Lalor!" she said; "well, and have I not countered him?"

She had, of course, but as far as I remembered there was something to be
said about another person who had at least helped. Now that is the worst
of girls. They are always for taking all the credit to themselves.

It was a grave day when I quitted Eden Valley for the first time. Every
one was affected, the women folk, my mother, my grandmother, even Aunt
Jen, went the length of tears. That is, all with only two exceptions, my
father and Miss Irma. My father was glad and triumphant--confident
that, though never the scholar Freddie Esquillant was bound to be, I was
yet stronger in the more material parts of learning--those which most
pleased the ordinary run of regents and professors.

I had already seen Irma early in the morning in that clump of trees
beyond the well where t