e, the house
will be disinfected, and the girls will come back to their work.
Miss Archer, the English governess, will be as strict and as
unsympathetic as ever, and Mademoiselle Omont will teach excellent
French, no doubt.

"Now, mother darling, you may have heard, or you may not have
heard, that I am in disgrace at Sunnyside. I could not give up
Irene, and in consequence the Professor says that I am not to
return to the school. He means by that that I am to be in a sense
expelled. I felt his words very acutely when he uttered them, for I
didn't wish to do anything contrary to your desires; but I felt
that I could not give up Irene. I was the first person who had any
influence over her, and she was running wild and becoming a torment
to her neighbors. I don't know what she would have come to in the
end. So I elected, mother darling, to go straight to Lady Jane's
instead of to Mrs. Brett, when dear Jane was so ill. Now I am
established here at The Follies, and I am not allowed to go back to
Sunnyside. Doubtless you know that, and perhaps you are angry with
your own Rosamund. But I asked your leave to stay, and you gave it,
although you did not know all the circumstances. Will you, dear
mother, write to Professor Merriman and ask him to tell you exactly
why he wishes to expel me? He will probably give you a very sorry
story; but you must believe it or not as you please. I think you
know your Rosamund better than he does. I am not going back to
Sunnyside, for they would not accept me; but, at the same time, I
do not feel at all a disgraced girl; and I should like the
Merrimans to be friends with me, and I should still like sometimes
to see Jane and Laura Everett, and some of the other girls--not
Lucy Merriman, for she is not in the least to my taste; but even
she does not greatly matter now that I am no longer living in the
house with her. The fact is, dear mother, I could not have been a
good girl had I stayed long in the house with Lucy, for she managed
in some extraordinary manner to rub me the wrong way. She was so
extra good, so punctilious, and so proper; she didn't suit me one
bit, and I didn't suit her one little bit either. I was becoming
quite a naughty girl. I never was too good--was I, mother dear?
Perhaps, darling, I'd have become a