CHAPTER II.





TWO pale lilies and two royal roses upon a stem, would scarcely form
a more beautiful or striking group than did the four maidens
standing together under the stone archway of the school-room, on
that gloomy day at Madam Truxton's.

The fair hair and blue eyes of Helen Le Grande and Lizzie Heartwell
distinctly contrasted with the jetty locks and eyes of Bertha Levy
and Leah Mordecai--the beauty of neither style being in any degree
marred by such close contact.

The blonde beauty of the first two maidens bespoke their
unmistakable Anglo-Norman blood and Christian descent, while the
opposite cast of the others testified to their Jewish origin.

A casual observer even, would have decided that these four maidens
were bound together by an unusual bond of friendship--an incongruous
friendship it might have seemed, and yet it was not such.

Helen Le Grande, the eldest of the group by a few months, was
scarcely eighteen years of age, as bright and gay a maiden as one
could find in all the land, and the only daughter of Judge Le