Hesper accepted her acknowledgments in the proper style of a benefactress, and returned her good-by kindly.

But not yet did she shake hands with her.
Some of my readers may wonder that Mary should for a moment dream of giving up what they would call her independence; for was she not on her own ground in the shop of which she was a proprietor?
and was the change proposed, by whatever name it might be called, anything other than _service_?
But they are outside it, and Mary was in it, and knew how little such an independence was worth the name.

Almost everything about the shop had altered in its aspect to her.

The very air she breathed in it seemed slavish.

Nor was the change in her.