memory and imagination in this strain, her heart swelled with loving
expectancy, and when the recess was spoken of as beginning "next week,"
she could hardly contain herself for joy.

What a cruel pity that such natural delightsome hopes must all collapse,
all fall to the ground! It was ruled by Mr. Fairfax that his
granddaughter had been absent so short a time that she need not go to
England this winter season. Came a letter from Mrs. Carnegie to express
the infinite disappointment at home. And there an end.

"I cried for three days," Bessie afterward confessed. "It seemed that
there never could befall me such another misery."

It was indeed terrible. In a day the big house was empty of scholars.
Madame Fournier adjourned to Bayeux. Miss Foster went to her mother. The
masters, the other teachers disappeared, all except Mademoiselle
Adelaide, who was to stay in charge of the two girls for a fortnight,
and then to resign her office for the same period to Miss Foster. There
was a month of this heartless solitude before Bessie and Janey.
Mademoiselle Adelaide bemoaned herself as their jailer, as much in
prison as they. They had good grounds of complaint. A deserted school at
Christmas-time is not a cheerful place.

But there was compensation preparing for Bessie.

* * * * *

"And when does Bessie Fairfax come?" was almost the first question of
Harry Musgrave when he arrived from Oxford.