companion that the language came easily to her. She picked up phrases here and there and strung them together without hesitation. Her anger helped her on, and her splendid command of herself had a strange effect upon her audience.
The other girls listened in open-mouthed wonder that Dawn should dare to speak before these strangers and not be covered with confusion. Almost they thought it was part of the play. But the two to whom she spoke turned and obeyed her command, the one because he was angry and wished to get his brother away, the other because there had been a certain appeal in her lovely eyes which had reached his soul and made him bow in reverence to her command. Then all at once, as he turned away, he knew that she was the girl whom his brother intended to make his wife, and a great sadness and sense of a loss came over him.
There was mutiny in her eyes as Dawn came back to the house a little later, and greeted her lover with a haughty manner. He had managed it that Charles should sit alone in the gray parlor and wait while he met the girl out in the entrance to the orchard and walked away with her to a sheltered place overlooking the river. There was no hint of the queen of the air in her demure dress, the well-sheathed curls, the small prunella slippers that peered from under the deep hem of her gray gown, but her bearing was queenly as she waited for him to speak. He saw that he was treading on dangerous ground.
"Do you really like such childish play?" he asked a trifle contemptuously.
"You had no right to come there!" she flashed. "If you did not like it, you should have gone away."
He was disconcerted. He did not wish to anger her, for he had come for another purpose.
"Well, never mind. If you enjoyed yourself, I suppose it does not matter whether I liked it or not. Let us talk of something else. Your play-days are almost over. You will soon begin to live real life."
She looked at him and felt that she came near to hating him. A sudden, unspeakable terror seized her. She let him talk on about the house they were to have, and tried to remember that he was lonesome and wanted a home as badly as she did, but somehow she felt nothing but fear and dislike. So, though she walked by his side, she heard little of what he said, only saying when he asked if she wished this or that: "I suppose so. I suppose it will be as you like."
As they came back to the house again, she asked him suddenly:
"Who was the young man with you?"
The frown came into his face again.
"Why do you ask?" he asked sharply.
"He did not feel the way you did about us out there on the hill."
"How do you know?" He watched her keenly, but her face told him nothing.
"I saw it in his eyes," she said quietly, and without more words went into the house and up to her room.
Dawn stood at the little window of her room and watched the two men go down the path from the door. Through the small panes her eyes followed them until they were out of sight, and her heart swelled with thoughts strange and new and fearful. How could she go and live with this man who had frowned at her innocent happiness? Would he not be worse than the woman who had taken her dear mother's place? And how could he be so cruel as to look at her in that way? It was the look she remembered on her father's face the day he sent her mother away. It was the cruelty of men. Perhaps they could not help it. Perhaps God made them so. But that other one had been different. He had understood and smiled. Her heart leaped out toward him as she remembered his look.
Was it because he was young, she wondered, that he had understood? He had seemed far younger than his companion, yet there had been something fine and manly in his face, in the broadness of his shoulders, and the set of his head, as he walked down the path, away from the house. Perhaps when he was older he would grow that way to, and not understand any more.
She sighed and dropped her face against the glass, and, now that they were out of sight, the haughty look melted into tears.
CHAPTER V
The day that Dawn left school to go back to her home was one long agony to her.
All the other girls were happy in the thought of home-going, some of them looking forward to returning for another year, others to entering into a bright girlhood filled with gaieties. But to Dawn it meant going into the gray of a looming fate where never again would she be happy, never again free.
Ever since the day of the play when she had seen her future husband frown, she had looked forward to her marriage with terror.
He had not come after that, but instead wrote her long letters full of plans about the house, their house, that they were to occupy together. The letters impressed that thought most deeply and made the whole hateful to her. It grew to seem that it was his house, and she would be his prisoner in it. Yet somehow he had succeeded in impressing her with the feeling that she was pledged to him in sacred honor, and that it would be a dreadful thing to break a tie like that. This was made stronger by her father's letters, which now grew more frequent, as if he sought to atone to his motherless child for the wrong he had done her.
Just the day before her home-going there came one of these letters, in which he told her that everything had been prepared for her marriage to take place within a week after her arrival. He told her of the trousseau which his wife had prepared for her, which was as elaborate and complete as such an outfit could be for one of her station in life. He also spoke about the dignity of her origin, and with unwonted elaboration commended her judgment in selecting so old and so fine a family as that of the house of Winthrop with which to ally herself. He added that it would have pleased her mother's family, and that Mr. Winthrop was one of his oldest and most valued friends.
Somehow that letter seemed to Dawn to put the seal of finality upon her fate. There was no turning back now. Just as her father used to compel her to go upstairs alone when he discovered that she was afraid of the dark, so she felt that if he once discovered her dislike for her future husband he would but hasten the marriage, and be in league with her husband against her always.
When the time came to leave the school, she clung with such fervor about the neck of the impassive Friend Ruth that the astonished lady almost lost her breath, and a strange wild thrill went through her unmotherly bosom, as of something that might have been and was lost. She looked earnestly down into the beautiful face of the girl who had so often defied her rules, and saw an appeal in those lovely eyes to which she would most certainly have responded had she understood, for she was a good woman and always sought to do her best.
But the boat left at once, and clinging arms had perforce to be removed. Once on the deck with the others, Dawn looked back at Friend Ruth as impassively as always, though the usually calm face of the woman searched her out with troubled glance, still wondering what had come over her wild young pupil. Somehow, as she watched the steamer plough away until Dawn was a mere blur with the others, Friend Ruth could not help being glad that the beautiful dark curls had never been cut.
The day was perfect, and the scenery along the Palisades had never looked more beautiful, yet Dawn saw nothing of it. She sat by the rail looking gloomily down into the water, and a curious fancy seized her that she would like to float out there on the water forever and get away from life. Then she began to consider the possibility of running away.
It was not the first time this thought had entered her mind. The week before she left the school,
