Cynthia was at home, seated on the back veranda, in a rattan chair, with a book which she was not reading.  Ellen stood before her, in her cheap attire, which she wore with an air which seemed to make it precious, such faith she had in it.  Ellen regarded her coarse blue-flowered challis with an innocent admiration which seemed almost able to glorify it into silk.  Cynthia took in at a glance the exceeding commonness of it all; she saw the hat, the like of which could be seen in the milliners’ windows at fabulously low prices; the foam of spurious lace and the spray of wretched blue flowers made her shudder.  “The poor child, she must have something better than that,” she thought, and insensibly she also thought that the girl must lose her evident faith in the splendor of such attire; must change her standard of taste.  She rose and greeted Ellen sweetly, though somewhat reservedly.  When the two were seated opposite each other, Cynthia tried to talk pleasantly, but all the time with a sub-consciousness as one will have of some deformity which must be ignored.  The girl looked so common to her in this array that she began to have a hopeless feeling of disgust about it all.  Was it not manifestly unwise to try to elevate a girl who took such evident satisfaction in a gown like that, in a hat like that?  Ellen wore her watch and chain ostentatiously.  The watch was too large for a chatelaine, but she had looped the heavy chain across her bosom, and pinned it with the brooch which Abby Atkins had given her, so it hung suspended.  Cynthia riveted her eyes helplessly upon that as she talked.

“I hope you are having a pleasant vacation,” said she, as she looked at the watch, and all at once Ellen knew.

Ellen replied that she was having a very pleasant vacation, then she plunged at once into the subject of her call, though with inward trembling.

“Miss Lennox,” said she—­and she followed the lines of a little speech which she had been rehearsing to herself all the way there—­“I am very grateful to you for what you propose doing for me.  It will make a difference to me during my whole life.  I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am.”

“I am very grateful to be allowed to do it,” replied Cynthia, with her unfailing refrain of gentle politeness, but a kindly glance was in her eyes.  Something in the girl’s tone touched her.  It was exceedingly earnest, with the simple earnestness of childhood.  Moreover, Ellen was regarding her with great, steadfast, serious eyes, like a baby’s who shrinks and yet will have her will of information.

“I wanted to say,” Ellen continued—­and her voice became insensibly hushed, and she cast a glance around at the house and the leafy grounds, as if to be sure that no one was within hearing—­“that I should never under any circumstances have said anything regarding what happened so long ago.  That I never have and never should have, that I never thought of doing such a thing.”