made happy?"

"Come with me, Sarah, and I will make you acquainted with our
household," says Mrs. Nesbitt, promptly.

As the door closes behind them, leaving her to her own society, a
rather unhappy shade falls across Molly's face.

A sensation of isolation--loneliness--oppresses her. Indeed, her
discouraging reception has wounded her more than she cares to confess
even to her own heart. If they did not want her at Herst, why had they
invited her? If they did want her, surely they might have met her with
more civility; and on this her first visit her grandfather at least
might have been present to bid her welcome.

Oh, that this hateful day were at an end! Oh, for some way of making
the slow hours run hurriedly!

With careful fingers she unfastens and pulls down all her lovely hair
until it falls in rippling masses to her waist. As carefully, as
lingeringly, she rolls it up again into its usual artistic knot at the
back of her head. With still loitering movements she bathes the dust of
travel from her face and hands, adjusts her soft gray gown, puts
straight the pale-blue ribbon at her throat, and now tells herself,
with a triumphant smile, that she has got the better of at least half
an hour of this detested day.

Alas! alas! the little ormolu ornament that ticks with such provoking
_empressement_ upon the chimney-piece assures her that her robing
has occupied exactly ten minutes from start to finish.

This will never do. She cannot well spend her evening in her own room,
no matter how eagerly she may desire to do so; so, taking heart of
grace, she makes a wicked _moue_ at her own rueful countenance in
the looking-glass, and, opening her door hastily, lest her courage fail
her, runs down the broad oak staircase into the hall beneath.

Quick-witted, as women of her temperament always are, she remembers the
situation of the room she had first entered, and, passing by all the
other closed doors, goes into it, to find herself once more in Marcia's
presence.

"Ah! you have come," says Miss Amherst, looking up languidly from her
_macrame_, with a frozen smile that owes its one charm to its
brevity. "You have made a quick toilet." With a supercilious glance at
Molly's Quakerish gown, that somehow fits her and suits her to
perfection. "You are not fatigued?"

"Fatigued?" Smiling, with a view to conciliation. "Oh, no; it is such a
little journey."

"So it is. How strange this should be our first meeting, living s