's pink-and-white
baby face came between us," she moaned, clinching her hands tightly
together and bursting ever and anon into a flood of tears.

She looked around at the little, stuffy room, and thought of all her
girlish day-dreams--of the sweet hopes she had had of soon leaving those
dingy four walls, and of having a little bower of a cottage to call
"home," with a handsome young husband all her own to love her.

She had pictured every scene to herself--just how each cozy room should
be furnished, and what vines and flowers should grow in the garden, and
the pretty dresses she would wear, and how she would stand at the window
and watch for handsome Harry to come home each night, and what a dear,
cozy life they would lead, loving each other so dearly.

And now what of those vanished day-dreams? Ah! God in heaven pity her!
they lay in ruins around her, and heart-wrecked, heart-broken, she was
facing the cold, bleak world again.

It had been by the greatest effort that she had looked in Dorothy's face
during the day that followed without betraying her bitter hatred of her;
but as the hours crept on, and she saw Dorothy's glance wander uneasily
now and then toward the clock, her intense rage grew almost
uncontrollable.

"She is longing for the hours to pass, so that she may join _him_,"
thought Nadine, and her black eyes fairly scintillated at the thought.

Suddenly Dorothy raised her curly head from her work.

"Girls!" she exclaimed, shrilly and eagerly, "have you all forgotten
that Monday is Labor Day? What are you going to do with yourselves?"

A score or more of voices answered at random that they thought it had
been decided long since that they were all going up the Hudson on an
excursion.

"I can't go on the excursion with you, girls," returned Dorothy, "for
I've got another engagement."

"Bring your company with you," chorused a dozen or more of the girls.

Dorothy glanced up hastily and met Nadine's burning eyes fixed intently
upon her.

She started, turned deathly pale, and then turned defiantly away,
wondering if Nadine could by any means suspect that the engagement she
had was to accompany handsome Harry Langdon to the matinee.

She wondered vaguely if Jessie, to whom she had confided this, had
betrayed her.

The look in Nadine Holt's eyes as they met her own startled her.

The bell which released the girls from the work-room that night had
scarcely rung ere Dorothy had on her sacque and sail