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Dotty's little heart, the swelling of which had net gone down at all during the night, now ached terribly. She covered her face with her hands, and groaned aloud. "Don't," said Mandoline, touched with pity. "They no business to treat you so." "O, Lina, don't you talk! You don't know anything about it. You never had such a father'n mother's they are! And now they won't let me come into the house!"
"Miss Lina is it Miss Lina I am to call?" stammered Agnes, taken by surprise. "It is Miss Lina that I wish to see; have the goodness to call her." The courteous but peremptory voice in which this was said, left Agnes no excuse for delay; and, though racked with curiosity, she was obliged to depart on her errand.
By the time they reached the outside of the wood it was morning twilight. Into the open trooped the strange torrent of deformity, each one following Lina. Suddenly she stopped, turned towards them, and said something which they understood, although to Curdie's ear the sounds she made seemed to have no articulation.
"And I'm Frances Black, and Jimmy ought to be 'shamed to treat you like he does." "I knows a turrible skeery tale," remarked a malicious Billy, looking at Lina and Frances. "If y' all wa'n't girls I 'd tell it to you." "We aren't any more scared 'n you, William Hill," cried Frances, her interest at once aroused; "I already know 'bout 'raw meat and bloody bones' and nothing's scarier 'n that."
She avoided Ralph, for without his parents' consent, her own sensitive delicacy rendered the old intercourse impossible, and any other wounded her to the soul with its restraints. Thus it happened that pretty, pure-hearted Lina sat in her room and wept. But Ralph was more impetuous.
Lina blushed scarlet, and Ralph laughed, little dreaming what cruel struggles had followed this trifling change of names. Indeed, Ralph was rather proud of the new dignity with which Lina's bashful love had invested him; and Lina was greatly puzzled to know what harm there was in calling so fine a young fellow Mr. Harrington, after all.
A smothered cry, as of acute pain, broke from beneath the drapery, and then, while Ralph stood lost in surprise, the curtains fell rustling together, and the faint sound of a door cautiously closed, admonished him that he was alone. "Lina, dear Lina," he called, reluctant to believe that she had left him so abruptly. There was no answer, not even a rustle of the damask. He was alone.
Forty dollars was just the price of a superb pearl bracelet in Lexington, and if Hugh had only sent it all to her instead of a part to Adah! The letter was torn in shreds, and 'Lina went to Lexington next day in quest of the bracelet, which was pronounced beautiful by the unsuspecting Adah, who never dreamed that her money had helped to pay for it.
He was about thirty years old, a white, clothed badly enough, much emaciated, and he seemed to have suffered a good deal. At his feet were an empty flask, thrown on the ground, and a cup and ball in palm wood, of which the ball, made of the head of a tortoise, was tied on with a fiber. "To hang himself! to hang himself!" repeated Lina, "and young still!
At the piano sat a large yellow lily which little Ida was sure she had seen in the summer, for she remembered the student saying she was very much like Miss Lina, one of Ida's friends. They all laughed at him then, but now it seemed to little Ida as if the tall, yellow flower was really like the young lady.
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