inistered occasional appropriate sentences of stinging
condolence and well-meant retrospection. "I wish you would go home!"

Every monosyllable was uttered with a desperate, wrathful
deliberateness and flinging away of all pretense and politeness.

"Well--'f I _never_!" gasped Mrs. Knoxwell, with a sound in her
voice as if she had received a blow in the pit of her stomach.

"Jest as you please, Marion--'f I ain't no more use!" And the
aggrieved matron, who had, as she said afterward in recounting it,
"done _everything_," left the scene of her labors and her
animadversions, with a face perfectly emptied of all expression by
her inability to "realize what she _did_ feel."

Ray Ingraham came in, went straight up to Marion, and took her into
her arms without a word. And Marion put her head down on Ray's
shoulder, and cried her very heart out.

"You needn't try to comfort me. I can't be comforted like anybody
else. It's the day of judgment come down into my life. I've sold my
birthright: I've nobody belonging to me any more. I wanted the
world--to be free in it; and I'm turned out into it now; and home's
gone--and mother.

"I never thought of her dying. I expected one of these days to do
for her, and not let her work any more. I meant to, Ray--I did,
truly! But she's dead--and I let her die!"

With sentences like these, Marion broke out now and again, putting
aside all Ray's consolations; going back continually to her
self-upbraidings, after every pause in which Ray had let her rest or
cry quietly; after every word with which she tried to prevail
against her despair and soothe her with some hope or promise.

"They are none of them for me!" she cried. "It would have been
better if I had never been born. Ray!" she said suddenly, in a
strained, hollow voice, grasping Rachel's arm and looking with wild,
swollen eyes into hers,--"I was just as bad by little Sue. I was
only fourteen then, but it was the same evil, unsuitable vanity and
selfishness. I was busy, while she was sick, making a white muslin
burnouse to wear to a fair. I had teased mother for it. It was a
silly thing for a girl like me to wear; it had a blue ribbon run in
the hem of the hood, and a bow and long blue ends behind. Poor
little Sue was just down with the fever. Mother had to go out, and
left me to tend her. She wanted some water--Oh!"

Marion broke down, and sobbed, with her head bowed to her knees as
she sat.

Ray sat perfectly still. She longe