ly started the school that morning, she
took out the envelopes and studied each handwriting fairly to see if she
could make out who were the senders of the letters.

That she found she could not do, but in her own mind she set down the
writers aright, and a bitter feeling of shame and humiliation came upon
her as she felt that those who sent would never have dreamed of making
such a present to any one they respected. It looked to her like
charity, and her face burned as she indignantly longed to return the
envelopes and notes to their senders.

She knew that there had been the three gentlemen visitors to the school
while she was absent upon the previous afternoon, and though it was
possible that they might have been down to speak to her respecting her
failure of trust, her heart told her that it was not; and now her
mother's strong desire to leave the place seemed to have come upon her
in turn, and she felt that she would give anything to be a hundred miles
away from Plumton and at peace.

She tried to win forgetfulness by devoting herself to the various
classes, but in vain; every step she heard seemed to be a visitor coming
to ask her about the money not paid, and every subject she took up
suggested the notes now lying in her pocket.

Twice over she went to her desk and there wrote a brief letter of thanks
to Mr William Forth Burge, but she tore it up directly; and she dared
not write one to George Canninge, nor yet to the vicar, from whom she
was sure the other amounts had come.

Just in the middle of one of her greatest fits of depression there was a
knock at the door, and she dreaded that it might be the vicar, while if
it had been George Canninge she felt that she dared not have faced him.

Her heart gave a throb of relief as she heard the familiar tones of Mr
William Forth Burge, and the next throb was one of gratitude as she knew
that he had had the delicacy to bring his sister with him. Then there
was a depressing feeling as she felt that they would show by their
manner how displeased and disappointed they were at her breach of trust.

Here she was wrong again, for her visitors' greeting was warm in the
extreme, and with the reaction a sensation of oppression robbed her of
the power of speech; while had she not tried hard she would have burst
into a passionate flood of tears.

"We were so sorry to hear of your bad headache, my dear," said little
Miss Burge affectionately, "and really I don't think you