“How that child’s mother could have gone off and left her all this time I don’t see,” Eunice said.  “If I were in her place and anything happened to her, I should never forgive myself.”

“Trust Ida Slome to forgive herself for most anything,” Aunt Maria returned, bitterly.  “But as far as that goes, I guess the child has had full as good care here as she would have had with her ma.”

“I guess so, too,” said Eunice; “better—­only I should never forgive myself.”

That was only a week before the graduation day, which was on a Wednesday.  It was a clear June day, with a sky of blue, veiled here and there with wing-shaped clouds.  It was quite warm.  Evelyn dressed herself very early.  She was ready long before it was time to take the car.  Evelyn, in her white graduating dress, was fairly angelic.  Although she had lost so much flesh, it had not affected her beauty, only made it more touching.  Her articulations and bones were so fairy-like and delicate that even with her transparent sleeved and necked dress there were no unseemly protuberances.  Her slenderness, moreover, was not so apparent in her fluffy gown.  Above her necklace of pink corals her lovely face showed.  It was full of a gentle and uncomplaining melancholy, yet that day there was a tinge of hope in it.  The faintest and most appealing smile curved her lips.  She looked at everybody with a sort of wistful challenge.  It was as if she said:  “After all, am I not pretty, and worthy of being loved?  Am I not worthy of being loved, even if I am not, and I have all my books in my head, too?”

Maria had given her a bouquet of red roses.  When Evelyn in her turn came forward to read her essay, holding her red roses, with red roses of excitement burning on her delicate cheeks, there was a low murmur of admiration.  Then it was that Maria, in her blue gown, seated among the other teachers, caught the look on Wollaston Lee’s face.  It was unmistakable.  It was a look of the utmost love and longing and admiration, the soul of the man, for the minute, was plainly to be read.  In a second, the look was gone, but Maria had seen.  “He is in love with her,” she told herself, “only he is so honorable that he chokes the love back.”  Maria turned very pale, but she listened with smiling lips to Evelyn’s essay.  It was very good, but not much beyond the usual rate of such productions.  Evelyn had nothing creative about her, although she was even a brilliant scholar.  But the charm of that little flutelike voice, coming from that slight, white-clad beauty, made even platitudes seem like something higher than wisdom.

When Evelyn had finished there was a great round of applause and a shower of flowers.  She returned again and again, and bowed, smiling delightedly.  She was flushed with her triumph.  She thought that even Mr. Lee must be pleased with her, if he did not love her, and be proud to have such a pupil.