CHAPTER IX.
Life at Miss Carleton's and life at Thorpe Castle were very different.
Marion had not been there very long before she began to feel most perfectly happy, and to wonder how she endured the monotonous routine of school.
The parting from Allan had really been terrible to her, his love had for so long been her chief comfort and her only pleasure.

She said to herself that she should miss him most terribly; yet, if she had looked into her own heart, she would have seen it was not so much him she should miss as it was the novelty of his letters, his plotting, his poetry, the stolen interviews, the hidden romance that she thought so beautiful.
"You will not forget me, darling ?" he said, pleadingly.

"You will write to me, and you will let me sometimes see you ?" She promised faithfully.
She wept over leaving him, yet in some unaccountable way her spirits rose when she came away; she felt more free, more at ease than she had done for a long time.
"You must make the best use of the sunny days," said Lady Ridsdale.
"There is one advantage in having been so long at school--you will be perfectly fresh to the world, and that is always a charm in itself.

You must give yourself up entirely to my guidance for a time." Marion did so most willingly.

Lady Ridsdale engaged a pretty, quick Parisian as lady's maid; she invited young ladies of her own rank and position to stay at the castle; she obtained every possible enjoyment and pleasure for the girl.
This was something like.