“I would rather struggle with her for a crust than hang on her garments asking a palace.  I don’t know what has come over you.  You are strangely changed!” cried Beulah, pressing her hands on her friend’s shoulders.

“The same change will come over you when you endure what I have.  With all your boasted strength, you are but a woman; have a woman’s heart, and one day will be unable to hush its hungry cries.”

“Then I will crush it, so help me Heaven!” answered Beulah.

“No! sorrow will do that time enough; no suicidal effort will be necessary.”  For the first time Beulah marked an expression of bitterness in the usually gentle, quiet countenance.  She was pained more than she chose to evince, and, seeing Dr. Hartwell’s carriage at the door, prepared to return home.

“Tell him that I am very grateful for his kind offer; that his friendly remembrance is dear to a bereaved orphan.  Ah, Beulah!  I have known him from my childhood, and he has always been a friend as well as a physician.  During my mother’s long illness he watched her carefully and constantly, and when we tendered him the usual recompense for his services he refused all remuneration, declaring he had only been a friend.  He knew we were poor, and could ill afford any expense.  Oh, do you wonder that I—­Are you going immediately?  Come often when I get to a boarding house.  Do, Beulah!  I am so desolate; so desolate!” She bowed her head on Beulah’s shoulder and wept unrestrainedly.

“Yes, I will come as often as I can; and, Clara, do try to cheer up.  I can’t bear to see you sink down in this way.”  She kissed the tearful face and hurried away.

It was Saturday, and, retiring to her own room, she answered Eugene’s brief letter.  Long before she had seen with painful anxiety that he wrote more and more rarely, and, while his communications clearly conveyed the impression that he fancied they were essential to her happiness, the protective tenderness of early years gave place to a certain commanding yet condescending tone.  Intuitively perceiving, yet unable to analyze this gradual revolution of feeling, Beulah was sometimes tempted to cut short the correspondence.  But her long and ardent attachment drowned the whispers of wounded pride, and hallowed memories of his boyish love ever prevented an expression of the pain and wonder with which she beheld the alteration in his character.  Unwilling to accuse him of the weakness which prompted much of his arrogance and egotism, her heart framed various excuses for his seeming coldness.  At first she had written often, and without reference to ordinary epistolary debts; but now she regularly waited (and that for some time) for the arrival of his letters; not from a diminution of affection so much as from true womanly delicacy, lest she should obtrude herself too frequently upon his notice.  More than once she had been troubled by a dawning consciousness of her own superiority; but, accustomed