Go, dear, and take your nap, and refresh yourself before five o'clock; that is the time we leave." As the door closed between them, she shook her head dubiously.

'"Going home this afternoon!' what does that signify?
Has she been quarrelling with that young lover of hers, or refusing him?
I should not care to ask any questions till she herself speaks; but I fear me something is wrong." She would not have feared, but been certain, could she have looked then and there into the next room.

She would have seen that the trouble was something deeper than she dreamed.

Francesca was sitting, her hands supporting an aching head, her large eyes fixed mournfully and immovably upon something which she seemed to contemplate with a relentless earnestness, as though forcing herself to a distressing task.

What was this something?
An image, a shadow in the air, which she had not evoked from the empty atmosphere, but from the depths of her own nature and soul,--the life and fate of a young girl.