Standing in the little study, Molly's whole figure seemed to expand in the sunshine. Her eyes sparkled, her lips parted, and she at once drank in and gave forth her delight. Some people might still agree with Mrs. Carteret that Molly was not beautiful. Still, it was an appearance that would always provoke discussion. Molly could not be overlooked, and when her mind and feelings were excited, then she gave a strange impression of intense vitality--not the pleasant overflow of animal spirits, but a suppressed, yet untamed, vitality of a more mental, more dangerous kind. Her movements were usually sudden, swift, and abrupt, yet there was in them all a singular amount of expression, and, if Molly's keen grey eyes and sensitive mouth did not convey the impression of a simple, or even of a kindly nature, they gave suggestions of light and longing, hunger and resolution. To-day, the twenty-first birthday, was to be the first day of freedom, the last of shackles and dulness and commonplace. It was to be a day of speech and a day of revenge. Molly was waiting now for Mrs. Carteret to come in and stand before her and hear all she meant to say about the long, unholy deception that had been put upon her. She was going to say good-bye now and be free. Molly's money would now be her own, she could take it away and share it with the deserted, misjudged mother. Nothing in all this was melodramatic; it would have been but natural if the facts had been as she supposed, only Molly made the little mistake of treating as facts her carefully built-up fancies, her long, childish story of her own life. She was so absorbed that she hardly saw Mrs. Carteret come in and sit down in her square, substantial way in a large arm-chair. Molly, standing by the window knocking the tassel of the blind to and fro, was breathing quickly. The older woman looked through some papers in her hand, put some notes of orders for groceries on a table by her side, and flattened out a long letter on foreign paper on her knee. She looked at Molly a little nervously, with cold blue eyes over gold-rimmed spectacles reposing on her well-shaped nose, and began: "Now that you are of age I must----" But Molly interrupted her. In a very low voice, speaking quickly with little gasps of impatience at any hesitation in her own utterance,--