een in her predicament had their fathers been cut
off untimely. She knew it was not that she was born out of wedlock,
a misfortune that might happen to anyone, which oppressed her youth,
but the fact of her father having been a foreigner, and of that she
was fiercely resolved to be proud. Neither mother nor father had she
ever known, but the instinct of generous youth is ever to defend the
oppressed, and with her defence had love sprung in Loveday's heart.
Therefore, even with her sensation of disappointment at the sight of the
yellowed linen, there was reverence and tenderness in her touch as she
laid the gown across her narrow bed.

She ripped off the coarse blue wrapper that enfolded her, and stood
revealed in her little flannel under-bodice and linsey-woolsey petticoat
of striped red and black, her thin girlish arms and young bosom making
her look more childish than she did when fully clothed. She held the
gown above her head and struggled into it. Her pale little face was red
when she poked it triumphantly through the narrow opening and finally
settled the neck, with its ruffled cambric frilling, round her throat,
and pulled the puff sleeves as far as they would go down her arms in a
vain attempt to make them conceal her red young girl's elbows. She could
only see a small portion of herself at a time in the little mirror, yet
that small portion, in spite of the skimpiness and yellowness of the
gown, pleased her eye.

For her dark tints were set off by the creamy folds, her slight shape
revealed by the tight bodice, even her bare feet, which some fine
prompting had made her wash carefully lest they should shame this essay,
looked small and graceful beneath the full folds.

But she could not dance in the Flora unshod, and so once again she bent
to the sea-chest, and withdrew her only pair of shoes, bought for her in
a generous moment last Michaelmas by Aunt Senath. She pulled on her
Sunday pair of white cotton stockings, and then the stout shoes. They
still fitted, and to her country eye looked well enough. She examined
herself bit by bit in the mirror, from her smooth black head to her
smooth black feet, and all the faintly yellowed linen that curved in and
swelled out between.

She was fair to look upon, not so much the mirror as her own awakened
consciousness told her that. She was meet to dance with Miss Le Pettit
at the Flora, could she but obtain one thing more--the white satin sash.

CHAPTER VI: I