nd embittered heart. She
had given up her gay freaks and amusing inventions, and devoted herself
assiduously to her studies. But the offence which she had received
rankled in her breast. As not one of her fellow-pupils had stood by her
in her hour of need, she regarded them as all alike perfidious and
ungrateful, and, "born for love, now hated all the world."

This morbid condition of mind led to a result still more unhappy.
Masking her real resentment beneath a calm exterior, Margaret received
the confidences of her schoolfellows, and used their unguarded speech to
promote discord among them. The girls, naturally enough, talked about
each other, and said things which it would have been kind and wise not
to repeat. Margaret's central position among them would have enabled her
to reconcile their small differences and misunderstandings, which she,
on the contrary, did her utmost to foment, not disdaining to employ
misrepresentation in her mischievous mediation. Before long the spirit
of discord reigned throughout the school, in which, the prime mover of
the trouble tells us, "scarcely a peaceful affection or sincere intimacy
remained." She had instinctively followed the ancient precept, "Divide
et impera," and ruled for evil those who would have followed her for
good.

This state of things probably became unbearable. Its cause was inquired
into, and soon found. A tribunal was held, and before the whole school
assembled, Margaret was accused of calumny and falsehood, and, alas!
convicted of the same.

"At first she defended herself with self-possession and eloquence. But
when she found that she could no more resist the truth, she suddenly
threw herself down, dashing her head with all her force against the iron
hearth, on which a fire was burning, and was taken up senseless."

All present were of course greatly alarmed at this crisis, which was
followed, on the part of Margaret, by days of hopeless and apathetic
melancholy. During these she would neither speak nor eat, but remained
in a sort of stupor,--the result of conflicting emotions. In the pain
which she now felt, her former resentment against her schoolmates
disappeared. She saw only her own offence, and saw it without hope of
being able to pass beyond it.

In this emergency, when neither the sorrow of her young companions nor
the entreaties of her teachers seemed to touch her, a single friend was
able to reach the seat of Margaret's distemper, and to turn the c