happy or contented
here? I'll do my best; I'm sure you know that! But if she's as you say,
she is a very different child to what you were, Miss Mildred dear.'

"'She will not be happy at first,' says Miss Mildred. 'But she has a
really noble nature, Nurse Lucy, and I am very sure that it will triumph
over the follies and faults which are on the outside.'

"And then she kissed me, the dear! and came up and helped me set the
little room to rights, and kissed the pillows, sweet lady, and cried
over them a bit. Ah me! 'tis hard parting from our children, even for a
little while, that it is."

Dame Hartley paused and sighed. Then she said: "And so, here the child
is, for good or for ill, and we must do our very best by her, Jacob, you
as well as I. What ailed you to-night, to tease her so at supper? I
thought shame of you, my man."

"Well, Marm Lucy," said the farmer, "I don't hardly know what ailed me.
But I tell ye what, 'twas either laugh or cry for me, and I thought
laughin' was better nor t'other. To see that gal a-settin' there, with
her pretty head tossed up, and her fine, mincin' ways, as if 'twas an
honor to the vittles to put them in her mouth; and to think of my
maid--" He stopped abruptly, and rising from the bench, began to pace up
and down the garden-path. His wife joined him after a moment, and the
two walked slowly to and fro together, talking in low tones, while the
soft summer darkness gathered closer and closer, and the pleasant
night-sounds woke, cricket and katydid and the distant whippoorwill
filling the air with a cheerful murmur.

Long, long sat Hildegarde at the window, thinking more deeply than she
had ever thought in her life before. Different passions held her young
mind in control while she sat motionless, gazing into the darkness with
wide-open eyes. First anger burned high, flooding her cheek with hot
blushes, making her temples throb and her hands clench themselves in a
passion of resentment. But to this succeeded a mood of deep sadness, of
despair, as she thought; though at fifteen one knows not, happily, the
meaning of despair.

Was this all true? Was she no better, no wiser, than the silly girls of
her set? She had always felt herself so far above them mentally; they
had always so frankly acknowledged her supremacy; she knew she was
considered a "very superior girl:" was it true that her only superiority
lay in possessing powers which she never chose to exert? And then came
the bitt