benignant smile. When all were seated, with a
graceful little bend she glided into her place at the end, the motion of
sitting down and the bend fused into one in a manner known only to
herself.

Anne's strong idealism, shown in her vivid although mistaken conceptions
of Shakspeare's women, was now turned into the channel of opera music.
After hearing several operas, she threw herself into her Italian songs
with so much fervor that Belzini sat aghast; this was not the manner in
which demoiselles of private life should sing. Tante, passing one day
(by the merest chance, of course) through the drawing-room while Anne
was singing, paused a moment to listen. "Ma fille," she said, when the
song was ended, tapping Anne's shoulder affably, "give no more
expression to the Italian words you sing than to the syllables of your
scales. Interpretations are not required." The old Frenchwoman always
put down with iron hand what she called the predominant tendency toward
too great freedom--sensationalism--in young girls. She spent her life in
a constant struggle with the American "jeune fille."

During this time Rast wrote regularly; but his letters, not being
authorized by Miss Vanhorn, Anne's guardian, passed first through the
hands of one of the teachers, and the knowledge of this inspection
naturally dulled the youth's pen. But Anne's letters to him passed the
same ordeal without change in word or in spirit. Miss Lois and Dr.
Gaston wrote once a week; Pere Michaux contented himself with
postscripts added to the long, badly spelled, but elaborately worded
epistles with which Mademoiselle Tita favored her elder sister. It was
evident to Anne that Miss Lois was having a severe winter.

The second event in Anne's school life was the gaining of a friend.

At first it was but a musical companion. Helen Lorrington lived not far
from the school; she was one of Tante's old scholars, and this Napoleon
of teachers especially liked this pupil, who was modelled after her own
heart. Helen held what may be called a woman's most untrammelled
position in life, namely, that of a young widow, protected but not
controlled, rich, beautiful, and without children. She was also heir to
the estate of an eccentric grandfather, who detested her, yet would not
allow his money to go to any collateral branch. He detested her because
her father was a Spaniard, whose dark eyes had so reprehensibly
fascinated his little Dutch daughter that she had unexpectedly