hat she turned and left the room, more angry and rebellious than she
had ever been since that dreadful time at Ion when her indulgence in a
fit of passion had so nearly cost little Elsie's life.

"Papa will have a pretty time making me do it," she muttered angrily to
herself, as she stood by a window in her bedroom looking out into the
grounds. "Ask Alma's pardon, indeed! She's not even a lady; she's
nothing but a poor woman, who has to support herself with her
needle,--or rather with a sewing machine, and cutting and fitting,--and
I think it's just outrageous for papa to tell me I must ask her pardon.
I'll not do it, and papa needn't think he can make me, though----" she
added, uneasily, the next minute, "to be sure, he always has made me
obey him; but I'm older now; too old, I think, even he would say, to be
whipped into doing what I don't choose to do.

"But he forbade me to come into his presence till I obeyed, and--oh,
dear, I can't live that way, because I love him so--better than any one
else in all the wide world; and--and--it would just kill me to have to
go without his love and his caresses; never to have him hug and kiss me,
and call me his dear child, his darling. Oh, I couldn't bear it! I never
could! it would just break my heart!" and her tears began to fall like
rain.

She cried quite violently for a while; then began to think of Alma more
kindly and pityingly than ever before, as an orphan and a stranger in a
strange land.

"Oh, I am ashamed to have treated her so!" she exclaimed at length, "and
I will ask her pardon; not only because papa has ordered me to do so,
but because I am sorry for her, and really mortified to think of having
treated her so badly."

Fortunately, just at that moment Alma's timid rap was heard at the door
and her voice saying, in a hesitating, deprecating way, "Miss Lu,
please, I need to try the dress once more. I'm very sorry to disturb and
trouble you, but I know you want it to be a good fit."

"Yes, of course I do, Alma," returned Lulu gently, opening the door as
she spoke; "you are quite right to come back with it. I'm sorry and
ashamed of having been so rude and unkind to you when you were in here
before," she added, holding out her hand. "It was shameful treatment.
Papa said I must ask your pardon, and I think I would do it now, even if
he hadn't ordered me."

"It is too much, Miss Lu," Alma said, blushing, and with tears in her
eyes. "I could never ask such a thing