She confronts her aunt with flaming eyes and crimson cheeks.

"I _do_ want to go to the theatre, and to balls, and dances, and _everything_.

I"-- passionately, and with a most cruel, despairing longing in her young voice, "want to dance, to laugh, to sing, to amuse myself--to be the gayest thing in all the world!" She stops as if exhausted, surprised perhaps at her own daring, and there is silence for a moment, a _little_ moment, and then Miss Majendie looks at her.
"'The gayest thing in all the world!' _and your father only four months dead!"_ says she, slowly, remorselessly.
All in a moment, as it were, the little crimson angry face grows white--white as death itself.

The professor, shocked beyond words, stands staring, and marking the sad changes in it.

Perpetua is trembling from head to foot.