The eventful day arrived, and I stood looking at them drive away from the house with a curious mixture of feelings--partly gloomy and partly cheerful. There went these people who constituted my family, and I meant never to set eyes on them again if I could help it. They were going to lark about, dance, be jolly, and amuse themselves in all kinds of ways, and it was a horrid shame that I was not going too. I should have been, only that Lady Trecastle would not let me have fair play, and had chosen to spite me and to treat me like a child when I was not one. I considered that she had behaved infamously to me. Other young people of my age and position could go to balls, enjoy themselves, have lots of fun, and frolic to their heart's content, and it was grossly unjust to debar me from doing the same. I was an oppressed and harshly-treated victim. I was being defrauded of my rights and ousted from my proper place through the enmity of a malevolent step-mother and the negligence of a father, who was too selfish and indolent to care what became of me, or any one else, as long as he was himself happy. As I stood at the window watching the departing carriage, and meditating on the wrongs that had rankled long in my breast, and had now at last reached their culminating point, I felt a single burning tear gather slowly in each eye and brim over on the cheek beneath. Weeping is not a weakness to which I am given, for I am, as a rule, one of the least tearful of mortals. But that tear was an exceptional one, and was drawn from me solely by a feeling of bitter resentment for past injuries, not by any foolish regrets or sentimentality relating to my approaching separation from both home and family. Mingled with these disagreeable thoughts, however, there was also present in my mind an exhilarating idea, which soon dispelled the unpleasant ones even as the sun disperses cloud. How could I mind anything now that liberty was so close at hand? What did it matter that Lady Trecastle had been able to convert my home into a hateful prison, now that I was about to break my bonds and cut myself adrift from it? Those people whose departure I had just watched should find a little surprise awaiting them on their return, in the shape of my disappearance! Freedom, novelty, and adventures lay before me. Without these things life was not worth having, and I was on the brink of enjoying them. Hurrah! The wide world was going to be open to me, and I was about to enter on an unknown future, wherein everything would be different from the past. The thought of all this made my pulses throb with excitement, and filled me with wild eagerness for the first taste of the anticipated joys.