Pamela gazed again, but she could make nothing of it. It was, and yet it was not her mother--not the old, faded, timid, hesitating woman who had nothing in the world but herself; but somebody so much younger, so much stronger--with those two shining, burning eyes, and this sudden self-consciousness and command. She gave a long look, and then she sighed and dropped her mother’s arm, and went away to do her bidding. It was the first appeal she had ever made in vain, and naturally it filled her with a painful amaze. It was such a combination of events as she could not understand. Nancy’s arrival, and Jack’s dismissal and this curious change in Mrs. Preston’s appearance. Her little heart had been full of pain when she left the room before, but it was pain of a very different kind. Now the laggard had come who was all the cause of the trouble then, and he had been sent away without reason or explanation, and what could it mean? “If I had but known a month ago!” What could it be that she had heard? The girl’s heart took to beating again very loud and fast, and her imagination began to work, and it is not difficult to divine what sort of theories of explanation rose in her thoughts. The only thing that Pamela could think of as raising any fatal barrier between herself and Jack was unfaithfulness or a previous love on his part. This, without doubt, was Nancy’s mission. She had come to tell of his untruthfulness; that he loved somebody else; perhaps had pledged himself to somebody else; and that between him and his new love, instant separation, heartbreak, and despair must ensue. “He need not have been afraid to tell me,” Pamela said to herself, with her heart swelling till it almost burst from her breast. All her little frame, all her sensitive nerves, thrilled with pain and pride. This was what it was. She was not so much stunned by the blow as roused up to the fullest consciousness. Her lip would have quivered sadly had she been compelled to speak; her voice might have broken for any thing she could tell, and risen into hard tones and shrieks of pain. But she was not obliged to speak to any one, and so could shut herself in and keep it down. She went about mechanically, but with nervous haste and swiftness, and covered the little table with its white cloth, and put bread on it, and the tea for which Nancy and her mother sighed; and she thought they looked at her with cruel coldness, as if it was they who were concerned and not she. As if it could be any thing to any body in comparison to what it was to her! As if she must not be at all times the principal in such a matter! Thus they sat down at the little round table. Nancy, who was much in her ordinary, ate, drank and was very comfortable, and pleased with the country cream in her tea; but the mother and the daughter neither ate nor drank. Mrs. Preston sat, saying now and then a word or two to Nancy which Pamela could not understand, but mostly was silent, pondering and