outside." By the upspringing light he saw the figure of Kate
very charmingly framed in by the window. The match burnt slowly out
in his fingers. Kate smiled mischievously. The astute young woman had
detected the pitiable subterfuge. For what else did she stand at the
head of her class, and had doting parents paid three years' tuition?

The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the
eastern recitation room the next morning when Miss Kate, whose seat
was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her heart,
affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the shoulder of
Carry, her neighbor. "HE has come," she gasped in a thrilling whisper.
"Who?" asked Carry sympathetically, who never clearly understood when
Kate was in earnest. "Who?--Why, the man who rescued us last night! I
saw him drive to the door this moment. Don't speak; I shall be better in
a moment--there!" she said, and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand
pathetically across her forehead with a tragic air.

"What can he want?" asked Carry, whose curiosity was excited. "I don't
know," said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism. "Possibly to
put his five daughters to school; perhaps to finish his young wife, and
warn her against us."

"He didn't look old, and he didn't seem like a married man," rejoined
Addy thoughtfully.

"That was his art, you poor creature!" returned Kate scornfully. "You
can never tell anything of these men, they are so deceitful. Besides,
it's just my fate!"

"Why, Kate," began Carry, in serious concern.

"Hush! Miss Walker is saying something," said Kate, laughing.

"The young ladies will please give attention," said a slow, perfunctory
voice. "Miss Carry Tretherick is wanted in the parlor."

Meantime Mr. Jack Prince, the name given on the card, and various
letters and credentials submitted to the Rev. Mr. Crammer, paced the
somewhat severe apartment known publicly as the "reception parlor" and
privately to the pupils as "purgatory." His keen eyes had taken in the
various rigid details, from the flat steam "radiator," like an enormous
japanned soda cracker, that heated one end of the room to the monumental
bust of Dr. Crammer that hopelessly chilled the other; from the Lord's
Prayer, executed by a former writing master in such gratuitous variety
of elegant calligraphic trifling as to abate considerably the serious
value of the composition, to three views of Genoa from the Institute,