Filled with enthusiasm, she announced to Elsie that night that she had secured quarters for them at Enderby for the two months. At the first breath the girl was quite as surprised and delighted as she was expected to be. The delight was, it is true, but momentary, though it sufficed to irradiate her face and fill Miss Pritchard's heart with generous joy--also, to hide from the latter the fact that it was succeeded by profound dismay. Those dimples! Those awful dimples! As she thought of them, Elsie Moss was overwhelmed by consternation. Of course she couldn't go to Enderby. She couldn't let Uncle John get even a second glimpse of her face. She fled from the room in a panic which Miss Pritchard believed to be excited eagerness to impart the good news to her friend at once. Though, as the days had passed, Elsie had persisted in her refusal to face her conscience or look into the future, she had been vaguely aware of a day of reckoning ahead. She had dimly taken it for granted that when she stopped she would have to consider--there would be nothing else to do. When she should be out from under the influence of this powerful stimulant, she foresaw herself meeting perforce the questions she had evaded. But also she had foreseen herself with two clear months before her and with Cousin Julia beside her. Now, on a sudden, all was changed. She seemed to have no choice. She had no control over her future. She had delayed so long that the choice was no longer hers. Her path was sharply defined. There was nothing she could do except to disappear on the eve of Miss Pritchard's departure for Enderby. And at that time there would be nothing to sustain her, no moral or redeeming force about an act that was compulsory. It was like being shown a precipice and realizing that at an appointed time one must walk straight over its verge. CHAPTER XXX Mrs. Moss, who had loved her brilliant, impulsive little stepdaughter like her own child, had given her up unwillingly. But it had been her husband's wish that Elsie should go to her uncle; the latter could give her advantages her stepmother could not afford; and she supposed it was right and natural for the girl to be with her own people, even though they had been strangers to her up to her sixteenth year. At first her loneliness found some solace in Elsie's letters. They were short, but seemed brimming over with happiness. Mrs. Moss didn't get any dear idea of the household at Enderby, but it was apparently all that the girl desired. Then gradually the letters began to fall off, and before Christmas-time she felt a decided change in them. They had become unsatisfactory, perfunctory; the girl seemed to be slipping away from her. She began to wonder if Elsie were not concealing something, and soon after Christmas was forced to the conclusion that she was unhappy and would not acknowledge it.