"I am tired of the past—it's all past at ours—the jewels have been worn by dead women, the old china, and bric-à-brac, has stood in empty houses! It's all of the dead and gone. So is the house, all the rooms are old. I should like to live in a new house."
"Perhaps you want a change?" I said. "Why don't you come back to school?"
She shook her head, and glanced away from me—up at the old Gothic church tower, and then said hurriedly:
"I must hurry on now, Gloria—I am wanted—at home."
One December evening not long after, during Miss Melford's hour with us, at recreation, she said:
"Young ladies, you will be pleased to hear that your old schoolmate, Estella Keed, returns to us to-morrow."
On the morrow Estella came, but how different was she from the old and the former Estella!
She wore a suitable and becoming costume of royal blue, and was a beautiful and pleasant looking girl! Her own natural graces had their own proper setting. It seemed indeed as if all things had become new to her, as if she lived and breathed in a fresher and fairer world than of yore!
Perhaps because I had been sympathetic in the hour of trouble, she attached herself to me, and one day, during recess, she told me why she had been temporarily withdrawn from school.
"Gloria," she said, "grandfather never gave me his permission to go to the garden-party—indeed, I never asked for it, for I was quite sure that he would not give it.