Thus while Carrie and Anna were going through the daily routine of a fashionable boarding-school, ’Lena was storing her mind with useful knowledge, and though her accomplishments were not quite so showy as those of her cousins, they had in them the ring of the pure metal. Although her charms were as yet but partially developed, she was a creature of rare loveliness, and many who saw her for the first time, marveled that aught so beautiful could be real. She had never seen Durward Bellmont since that remarkable Christmas week, but many a time had her cheeks flushed with a feeling which she could not define, as she read Anna’s accounts of the flattering attentions which he paid to Carrie, who, when at home, still treated her with haughty contempt or cool indifference. But for this she did not care. She knew she was loved by Anna, and liked by John Jr., and she hoped—nay, half believed—that she was not wholly indifferent to her uncle, who, while he seldom made any show of his affection, still in his heart admired and felt proud of her. With his wife it was different. She hated ’Lena—hated her because she was beautiful and talented, and because in her presence Carrie and Anna were ever in the shade. Still her niece was too general a favorite in the neighborhood to allow of open hostility at home, and so the proud woman ground together her glittering teeth—_and waited_! Among the many who admired ’Lena, there was no one who gave her such full and unbounded homage as did her grandmother, whose life at Maple Grove had been one of shadow, seldom mingled with sunshine. Gradually had she learned the estimation in which she was held by her son’s wife, and she felt how bitter it was to eat the bread of dependence. As far as she was able, ’Lena shielded her from the sneers of her aunt, who thinking she had done all that was required of her when she fixed their room, would for days and even weeks appear utterly oblivious of their presence, or frown darkly whenever chance threw them in her way. She had raised no objection to ’Lena’s continuing a pupil of Mr. Everett, who, she hoped, would not prove indifferent to her charms, fancying that in this way she would sooner be rid of one whom she feared as a rival of her daughters. But she was mistaken; for much as Malcolm Everett might admire ’Lena, another image than hers was enshrined in his heart, and most carefully guarded was the little golden curl, cut in seeming sport from the head it once adorned, and, now treasured as a sacred memento of the past. Believing that it would be so because she wished it to be so, Mrs. Livingstone had more than once whispered to her female friends her surmises that Malcolm Everett would marry ’Lena, and at the time of which we are speaking, it was pretty generally understood that a strong liking, at least, if not an engagement, existed between them.