mall, unobtrusive girl of fifteen was fast sinking into a state of
apathy--the most dangerous condition of all.

The new school year, however, brought her something--the arrival of a
friend. As she was dawdling with a book in a corner of the drawing-room,
watching a circle of "old girls" who were whispering and giggling over
some vacation tale, a small voice came to her ears,--

"Is it that you also are strange here?"

Adelle was so surprised at being addressed, also at the foreign-looking
girl who had spoken, that she did not answer, and the other continued
with a smile on her singularly red lips,--

"I speak English ver--ver badly!"

"What is your name?" Adelle asked bluntly.

"Diane Merelda," the girl said in a liquid tone.

"What?" Adelle asked with puckered brows.

"Di-ane Merel-da," came more slowly in the same soft tone. "See!" She
took with a gracious movement the pencil from Adelle's hand and wrote on
a piece of paper the name, and added beneath in small letters "F. de M."

"Oh," said Adelle, "what do those mean?" pointing to the letters
beneath.

"Fille de Marie--a daughter of the Blessed Virgin," the girl translated
sweetly.

Adelle looked at the stranger in bewilderment. She was a dainty person,
as small as Adelle, but a perfectly formed young woman. Her black hair
was tightly braided over her small head, in a fashion then strange, and
her face was very pale, of a natural pallor emphasized by the line of
carmine lips. Her eyes were black and wide. She smiled gently,
contentedly, upon Adelle. Altogether she was an unusual phenomenon to
the young American. She explained herself volubly if not fluently in
broken English, pausing every now and then with a charming birdlike toss
of her little black head and, "You say so, no?"--waiting for Adelle's
nod to dash on into further intricacies of speech.

Miss Diane Merelda, as she told Adelle Clark, was the daughter of a
wealthy Mexican whose acquaintance with Americans had so liberalized him
that he preferred to educate his children in the States and in schools
not under Catholic control. Senorita Diane had left her father's home in
Morelos earlier than intended, however, because of the outbreak of an
insurrection in the province, in which her father was concerned. As his
hacienda near Morelos was not safe on account of brigands, Senor Merelda
had sent his wife and daughter abroad to join his sons, and so Diane had
reached Herndon Hall by the way of Madr