ume to question Miss Melford on the subject; but one autumn morning,
when passing through Mercer's Lane, I came across Estella. She looked
shabby and disconsolate, in her faded gown and worn headgear, and I
asked her if she had been unwell.

"Oh dear no," was the response, "only very dull. I never go anywhere, or
see any one--how can I help being so? I am only Molly now. No one calls
me by my beautiful mother's name, Estella. I want to learn to be a
typewriter, or something, and go and live in a big city, but grandpa
says I must wait, and then he'll see about it! I detest this horrid
lane!" she added passionately.

I looked down the long, mediaeval street, with its gabled houses, and
then at the old church tower (round which the birds were circling in the
distance), and replied with truth that it was picturesque, and carried
one back into the storied past.

"I am tired of the past--it's all past at ours--the jewels have been
worn by dead women, the old china, and bric-a-brac, has stood in empty
houses! It's all of the dead and gone. So is the house, all the rooms
are old. I should like to live in a new house."

"Perhaps you want a change?" I said. "Why don't you come back to
school?"

She shook her head, and glanced away from me--up at the old Gothic
church tower, and then said hurriedly:

"I must hurry on now, Gloria--I am wanted--at home."

One December evening not long after, during Miss Melford's hour with us,
at recreation, she said:

"Young ladies, you will be pleased to hear that your old schoolmate,
Estella Keed, returns to us to-morrow."

On the morrow Estella came, but how different was she from the old and
the former Estella!

She wore a suitable and becoming costume of royal blue, and was a
beautiful and pleasant looking girl! Her own natural graces had their
own proper setting. It seemed indeed as if all things had become new to
her, as if she lived and breathed in a fresher and fairer world than of
yore!

Perhaps because I had been sympathetic in the hour of trouble, she
attached herself to me, and one day, during recess, she told me why she
had been temporarily withdrawn from school.

"Gloria," she said, "grandfather never gave me his permission to go to
the garden-party--indeed, I never asked for it, for I was quite sure
that he would not give it.

"But I meant to go all the same, and persuaded Mrs. Mansfield, the
housekeeper, to help me. She it was who altered and did up an old gown
of