good, and it was her duty to be kind to Dan as well as to Susie. Clara said nothing, but pondered deeply over her mother’s ways of securing her ends. When the conversation was resumed, Mrs. Forest showed a remarkable clemency toward Susie, especially after discovering that Clara had been talking with her father during her walk. This was tact again. Clara had somehow inherited her father’s tendency to radicalism, and might be easily shocked into a heroic course toward her brother’s victim. “I do not think,” said Mrs. Forest, “that we can do better than to get her a place where she can be quiet; and as she is so very deft with her needle, and can make herself useful in many ways, I do not think this will be difficult.” “This will be to fail her in what she most needs—sympathy,” Clara remarked. “My dear Clara,” said Miss Marston, “we cannot sympathize with folly unless we are foolish ourselves. You know the meaning of the word sympathy.” There was a little too much of the dogmatism of the teacher in this to please Clara, but she showed no displeasure in her very calm reply: “But we can sympathize with suffering in all cases.” “Yet even for her good,” replied Mrs. Forest, “we should show disapprobation of her conduct. By being too lenient, it would lead her to hold her act lightly, and open the way for its repetition.” “Well, I think, mamma, with all proper deference, that your reasoning is exceedingly weak. Will not one terrible lesson like this be enough for any girl like Susie? Besides, you forget how many years it must be before she can outlive her love for——” Mrs. Forest trembled; but Clara saw the danger her mother dreaded, and continued, “for her betrayer, and by that time she will become staid and prudent.” “I think myself,” said Miss Marston, “that there is little danger of her repeating her folly. She seems really a very modest young person. She has undoubtedly fallen through an ill-directed affection. What sort of a man is her lover, and where is he?” Mrs. Forest did not dare meet Clara’s eyes during her quick answer, “Oh, it is a young man in town. He does not seem to care anything for her.” “I consider him an unprincipled wretch,” replied Clara, indignantly. Her mother’s determination to screen Dan looked very ugly in her eyes. “Papa says he offered to marry her,” she continued, addressing Miss Marston, “but in a way that showed he considered it a great sacrifice; and she was proud enough and womanly enough to throw his insulting offer back in his teeth. I like her for that, and I think we ought to protect her right generously. I mean to help her, at all events.” “My child!” cried Mrs. Forest, in alarm. “You are so impulsive, so imprudent. You will certainly be talked about.” “I don’t think, mamma, that should make any difference when we know we are in the right. I believe the right way is to find out what our duty is, and then, to do it openly and fairly.”