Maria and Evelyn went in, and Maria closed and locked the door.

“What have you come home for?” asked Aunt Maria.  “Why didn’t you go to the reception, and stay at Miss Thomas’s, the way you said you were going to, I’d like to know?”

“Evelyn didn’t feel very well, and I thought we’d better come home,” replied Maria, with a little note of evasion in her voice.

Aunt Maria turned and looked sharply at Evelyn, who was leaning against the wall.  She was faint again, and she looked, in her white dress with her slender curves, like a bas-relief.  “What on earth is the matter with her?” asked Aunt Maria in her angry voice, which was still full of the most loving concern.  She caught hold of Evelyn’s slight arm.  “You are all tired out, just as I expected,” she said.  “I call the whole thing pure tomfoolery.  If girls want to get educated, let them, but when it comes to making such a parade when they are all worn out with education there is no sense in it.  Maria, you get her up-stairs to bed.”

Evelyn was too exhausted to make any resistance.  She allowed Maria to assist her up-stairs and undress her.  When her sister bent over her to kiss her good-night, she said, soothingly, “There now, darling; go to sleep.  You will feel better now school is done and you will have a chance to rest.”

But Evelyn responded with the weakest and most hopeless little sob.

“Don’t cry, precious,” said Maria.

“Won’t you tell if I tell you something?” said Evelyn, raising herself on one slender arm.

“No, dear.”

“Well—­he does—­care a good deal about me.  I know now.  I—­I met him out in the grove after the exercises were over, and—­there was nobody there, and he—­he caught hold of my arms, and, Maria, he looked at me, but—­” Evelyn burst into a weak little wail.

“What is it, dear?”

“Oh, I don’t know what it is, but for some reason he thinks he can’t tell me.  He did not say so, but he made me know, and—­and oh, Maria, he is going away!  He is not coming back to Westbridge at all.  He is going to get another place!”

“Nonsense!”

“Yes, it is so.  He said so.  Oh, Maria! you will think I am dreadful, and I do love you and Aunt Maria and Uncle Henry and Aunt Eunice, but I can’t help minding his going away where I can never see him, more than anything else in the world.  I can’t help loving him most.  I do feel so very badly, sister, that I think I shall die.”

“Nonsense, darling.”

“Yes, I shall.  And I am not ashamed now.  I was ashamed because I thought so much about a man who did not care anything about me, but now I am not ashamed.  I am just killed.  A person is not to blame for being killed.  I am not ashamed.  I am killed.  He is going away, and I shall never see him again.  The sight of him was something; I shall not even have that.  You don’t know, sister.  I don’t love him for my own self, but for himself.  Just the knowing he is near is something, and I shall not even have that.”  Evelyn was too weak to cry tumultuously, but she made little, futile moans, and clung to Maria’s hand.  Maria tried to soothe her, and finally the child, worn out, seemed to be either asleep or in the coma of exhaustion.