forehead." As she ceased speaking, Mrs. Graham drew the girl close to
her, and kissed the white brow tenderly, murmuring: "God bless my
darling daughter! If she knew how her mother's heart aches at parting
with her!" But Hilda did not know. She was too angry, too bewildered,
too deeply hurt, to think of any one except herself. She felt that she
could not trust herself to speak, and it was in silence, and without
returning her mother's caress, that she rose and sought her own room.

Mrs. Graham looked after her wistfully, tenderly, but made no effort to
call her back. The tears trembled in her soft blue eyes, and her lip
quivered as she turned to her work-table; but she said quietly to
herself: "Solitude is a good medicine. The child will do well, and I
know that I have chosen wisely for her."

Bitter tears did Hildegarde shed as she flung herself face downward on
her own blue sofa. Angry thoughts surged through her brain. Now she
burned with resentment at the parents who could desert her,--their only
child; now she melted into pity for herself, and wept more and more as
she pictured the misery that lay before her. To be left
alone--_alone!_--on a squalid, wretched farm, with a dirty old woman, a
woman who had been a servant,--she, Hildegardis Graham, the idol of her
parents, the queen of her "set" among the young people, the proudest and
most exclusive girl in New York, as she had once (and not with
displeasure) heard herself called!

What would Madge Everton, what would all the girls say! How they would
laugh, to hear of Hilda Graham living on a farm among pigs and hens and
dirty people! Oh! it was intolerable; and she sprang up and paced the
floor, with burning cheeks and flashing eyes.