‘Why did not you write to her and tell her all this?’ said Molly, half afraid of appearing to cast blame by her very natural question.

’I wish I had her letter to show you; you must have seen some of mamma’s letters, though; don’t you know how she always seems to leave out just the important point of every fact?  In this case she descanted largely on the enjoyment she was having, and the kindness she was receiving, and her wish that I could have been with her, and her gladness that I too was going to have some pleasure, but the only thing that would have been of real use to me she left out, and that was where she was going to next.  She mentioned that she was leaving the house she was stopping at the day after she wrote, and that she should be at home by a certain date; but I got the letter on a Saturday, and the festival began on the next Tuesday—­’

‘Poor Cynthia!’ said Molly.  ’Still, if you had written, your letter might have been forwarded.  I don’t mean to be hard, only I do so dislike the thought of your ever having made a friend of that man.’

‘Ah!’ said Cynthia, sighing.  ’How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly:  I was only a young girl, hardly more than a child, and he was a friend to us then; excepting mamma, the only friend I knew; the Donaldsons were only kind and good-natured acquaintances.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Molly humbly, ’I have been so happy with papa.  I hardly can understand how different it must have been with you.’

’Different!  I should think so.  The worry about money made me sick of my life.  We might not say we were poor, it would have injured the school, but I would have stinted and starved if mamma and I had got on as happily together as we might have done—­as you and Mr. Gibson do.  It was not the poverty; it was that she never seemed to care to have me with her.  As soon as the holidays came round, she was off to some great house or another, and I dare say I was at a very awkward age to have me lounging about in her drawing-room when callers came.  Girls at the age I was then are so terribly keen at scenting out motives, and putting in their awkward questions as to the little twistings and twirlings and vanishings of conversation; they’ve no distinct notion of what are the truths and falsehoods of polite life.  At any rate I was very much in mamma’s way, and I felt it.  Mr Preston seemed to feel it too for me; and I was very grateful to him for kind words and sympathetic looks—­ crumbs of kindness which would have dropped under your table unnoticed.  So this day, when he came to see how the workmen were getting on, he found me in the deserted schoolroom, looking at my faded summer bonnet and some old ribbons I had been sponging out, and half-worn-out gloves —­a sort of rag-fair spread out on the deal table.  I was in a regular passion with only looking at that shabbiness.  He said he was so glad to hear I was going to this festival with