At last when she had laboriously completed "Little Dorrit" and was beginning heavily upon the "Christmas Stories," the vacation came to an end and the Herndon girls returned for the fall term. Adelle was now a familiar figure to them, and therefore less interesting to snub. She was merely ignored, which did not hurt her. Whatever might have been her slender expectations of happiness, she must have long since given up any idea of accomplishing them like other girls. She was becoming a perfect small realist, content to take the facts of life for what they seemed. She watched without conscious pain or envy the flurry of greetings and boastful exchanges of experiences among the girls the first day of their return to school. She was either ignored or passed by with a polite nod and a "Hello, Adelle! Did you have a good time with Rosy?"--while the other girls gathered into knots and resorted to each others' rooms for deeper confidences. It was an old story now, being an outsider, and the small, unobtrusive girl of fifteen was fast sinking into a state of apathy--the most dangerous condition of all. The new school year, however, brought her something--the arrival of a friend. As she was dawdling with a book in a corner of the drawing-room, watching a circle of "old girls" who were whispering and giggling over some vacation tale, a small voice came to her ears,-- "Is it that you also are strange here?" Adelle was so surprised at being addressed, also at the foreign-looking girl who had spoken, that she did not answer, and the other continued with a smile on her singularly red lips,-- "I speak English ver--ver badly!" "What is your name?" Adelle asked bluntly. "Diane Merelda," the girl said in a liquid tone. "What?" Adelle asked with puckered brows. "Di-ane Merel-da," came more slowly in the same soft tone. "See!" She took with a gracious movement the pencil from Adelle's hand and wrote on a piece of paper the name, and added beneath in small letters "F. de M." "Oh," said Adelle, "what do those mean?" pointing to the letters beneath. "Fille de Marie--a daughter of the Blessed Virgin," the girl translated sweetly. Adelle looked at the stranger in bewilderment. She was a dainty person, as small as Adelle, but a perfectly formed young woman. Her black hair was tightly braided over her small head, in a fashion then strange, and her face was very pale, of a natural pallor emphasized by the line of carmine lips. Her eyes were black and wide. She smiled gently, contentedly, upon Adelle. Altogether she was an unusual phenomenon to the young American. She explained herself volubly if not fluently in broken English, pausing every now and then with a charming birdlike toss of her little black head and, "You say so, no?"--waiting for Adelle's nod to dash on into further intricacies of speech.