me. You can guess what has
happened. No? Not even yet? Is it innocence or kindness that makes
you so slow to understand? My dear, I have obtained admission to
this respectable house by means of false references, and I have been
discovered. _Now_ you know why you must not be the friend of such a
woman as I am! Once more, good-night--and good-by."

Emily shrank from that miserable farewell.

"Bid me good-night," she said, "but don't bid me good-by. Let me see you
again."

"Never!"

The sound of the softly-closed door was just audible in the darkness.
She had spoken--she had gone--never to be seen by Emily again.

Miserable, interesting, unfathomable creature--the problem that night of
Emily's waking thoughts: the phantom of her dreams. "Bad? or good?" she
asked herself. "False; for she listened at the door. True; for she told
me the tale of her own disgrace. A friend of my father; and she never
knew that he had a daughter. Refined, accomplished, lady-like; and she
stoops to use a false reference. Who is to reconcile such contradictions
as these?"

Dawn looked in at the window--dawn of the memorable day which was, for
Emily, the beginning of a new life. The years were before her; and the
years in their course reveal baffling mysteries of life and death.

CHAPTER IV. MISS LADD'S DRAWING-MASTER.

Francine was awakened the next morning by one of the housemaids,
bringing up her breakfast on a tray. Astonished at this concession to
laziness, in an institution devoted to the practice of all virtues, she
looked round. The bedroom was deserted.

"The other young ladies are as busy as bees, miss," the housemaid
explained. "They were up and dressed two hours ago: and the breakfast
has been cleared away long since. It's Miss Emily's fault. She wouldn't
allow them to wake you; she said you could be of no possible use
downstairs, and you had better be treated like a visitor. Miss Cecilia
was so distressed at your missing your breakfast that she spoke to the
housekeeper, and I was sent up to you. Please to excuse it if the tea's
cold. This is Grand Day, and we are all topsy-turvy in consequence."

Inquiring what "Grand Day" meant, and why it produced this extraordinary
result in a ladies' school, Francine discovered that the first day of
the vacation was devoted to the distribution of prizes, in the
presence of parents, guardians and friends. An Entertainment was added,
comprising those merciless tests of human endura