ually taboo.

Long and often did Lorna puzzle over this idiosyncrasy of her father.
She retained vague memories of her early childhood, when he had surely
been utterly different and would come into the nursery to romp with her.
It had not been altogether her mother's death; that had happened when
she was only six years old, and there were bright memories after it of
happy times together. No--it was when she was ten years old that the
unknown catastrophe must have occurred which had ruined her father's
life. She could remember plainly the visit of several gentlemen, and of
loud angry voices talking inside the drawing-room; she was standing on
the stairs as they came out into the hall, and her father had told her
roughly to run away. Then had followed a hasty removal, and they had
left their comfortable home in London and had come to live in Naples.
After a dreary time in a second-rate Italian boarding-house she had been
sent to the Villa Camellia, and all link with England was lost and
broken. No aunt or cousins ever wrote to her, and the earlier portion of
her life seemed a period that was utterly ended.

So far Lorna had never had the courage to make any inquiries into the
why and wherefore of this unsatisfactory state of affairs. If a question
rose to her lips the sight of her father's forbidding face effectually
curbed her curiosity. That some tragedy had been concealed from her she
was positive. The suspicion, nay the absolute certainty, was sufficient
to place a division between herself and other girls. She would hear her
schoolfellows discussing their homes, relations, and friends, and when
she contrasted their gay doings with her own barren holidays she shrank
into her shell, and would make no allusion to her private affairs.

"Lorna's an absolute oyster, you can get nothing out of her," was the
universal verdict of her form.

But if she said little she thought a great deal. She would listen
jealously to the accounts of other people's fun, and a bitter feeling
had grown in her heart. Why should her life be so shadowed? She had as
much right to happiness as the rest of the school. Why should she seem
singled out by a vindictive fate and separated from her companions?

In justice to the girls at the Villa Camellia it is only fair to say
that any separation was entirely of Lorna's own making. Had she been
more expansive she would have readily enough found friends. No one knew
of the misery of her home life, and