o-night, and say, `Mamma, we will
leave here to-morrow,' I shall be ready to receive you into my embrace
once more."

"My dear mother, you drive me to speak firmly," said Hazel quietly. "I
shall not be able to come to you to-night and to say that we will leave
here. It is impossible."

"Then you must have formed some attachment that you are keeping from me.
Hazel, if you degrade yourself by marrying that Chute I will never
speak to you again."

"Hush, mother! the children will hear."

"Let them hear my protests," cried Mrs Thorne excitedly. "I will
proclaim it on the housetops, as Mr Lambent very properly observed last
Sunday in his sermon. I will let every one know that you intend to
degrade yourself by that objectionable alliance, and against it I now
enter my most formal protest."

Mrs Thorne's voice was growing loud, and she was shedding tears. Her
countenance was flushed, and she looked altogether unlovely as well as
weak.

Hazel hesitated for a moment, her face working, and the desire to weep
bitterly uppermost, but she mastered it, and laying her hand upon her
mother's shoulder, bent forward once again to kiss her.

It was only to be repulsed; and as, with a weary sigh, she turned to the
door, Mrs Thorne said to her angrily--

"It is time I resumed my position, Hazel--the position I gave up to you
when forced by weakness and my many ills. Now I shall take to it once
again, and I tell you that I will be obeyed. We shall leave this place
to-morrow morning, and I am going to begin to pack up at once."

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

A QUESTION OF CASH.

"Heaven give me strength to be patient and forbearing!" said Hazel
softly, as she left the cottage and went into the school, for it was
just upon two o'clock. "What am I to do? Will she have forgotten this
by night?"

Far from it, for as soon as Hazel returned Mrs Thorne began again with
fresh importunity, and in so strange a manner that her daughter grew
frightened, and hesitated as to whether she should send for medical
advice; but after a while the poor woman grew more calm, took out her
work and began knitting some unnecessary ornament with costly wool;
ending, to Hazel's great relief, by going off fast asleep.

She signed to the children to be quiet, and led them softly to bed
without waking the sleeper; after which, at liberty for the first time
that day, she sat down in her own room to think, previous to drawing up
a statement of the schoo