of the festive season filled each youthful
mind.

Winnie especially was in a state of great excitement, for Mrs. Blake
had promised her a party with a real Christmas tree, to which she was
at liberty to invite as many of her school-mates as she chose. One
little trifle alone damped her happiness--namely, the command to
include Ada Irvine in the list of her invitations; and although Winnie
pouted and pleaded her dislike of that young lady, Mrs. Blake remained
firm, and insisted that her injunction should be carried out. "Your
father was formerly on very intimate terms with Mr. Irvine, Winnie, and
I will have no slight or disrespect shown to his daughter; so, either
post her an invitation or abandon the idea of a party altogether." And
when her step-mother spoke in that decided manner, Winnie knew she had
no alternative save to yield.

"I sincerely trust Ada Irvine will have the good sense to refuse," she
confided to Nellie the day on which the invitations were about to be
issued. "She'll spoil the whole affair it she comes, horrid old thing;
and I did mean it all to be so nice. Ugh! she will surely never
accept," and Winnie's face wore anything but an amiable expression.

School had not been such a very pleasant place those last few weeks,
and many of the scenes which occurred there were certainly neither
seemly nor instructive. Open warfare reigned between Ada and Winnie,
and the skirmishes were becoming serious as well as disagreeable; for
Winnie, scouting all Nellie's proposals of being patient and winning by
love, made a fiery little adversary, and Ada Irvine's dislike of both
was rapidly deepening into the bitterest hatred--the more so when she
saw Nellie rising gradually in the esteem of both teachers and
scholars: the former being won by her steady attention and modest
behaviour; the latter by the simple, kindly spirit which characterized
all her actions. There was much still to call for patient forbearance
and quiet endurance; but Nellie could see the golden sunlight streaming
through the clouds, and hopefully trusted that by-and-by every dark
shadow would vanish and leave never a trace behind.

This state of matters was as gall and wormwood to Ada. Nellie's
gradual triumph, and Winnie's malicious delight thereat, roused every
evil passion in her nature; and out of her deadly hatred she meditated
a sure revenge when the opportunity came in her way. What form it
would take she hardly knew; events woul