This, however, was more easily said than done. Isa had locked and bolted herself into her room, where she was to be heard sobbing hysterically, but no entreaties of her mother or commands of her father would induce her to unbar the door or get a word out of her till her father threatened to break the door down. "If you do, I'll jump out of the window and run away," cried Isabella, and she was heard to open her window as if to put her threat into execution. She was crying at the top of her voice, and more than one person had already stopped in the street to listen. Mr. Ferrand dreaded nothing so much as any publicity of his family affairs, and he was at last persuaded by his wife to let Isa alone for the night. CHAPTER XII. _AN OLD ENEMY._ RHODA went to her room burning with shame and anger. Her first impulse was to put on her bonnet and go home, but she reflected, as she grew a little cooler, that it was after nine o'clock of a dark night, and too late to undertake a walk of a mile alone, and that she could not possibly take her trunk. And then what would Miss Carpenter say? What would the ladies of the board say when they came to hear the whole story? They would think she had disgraced the institution and herself. Perhaps they would not let her stay there any more. And oh, what would Aunt Hannah say if she knew? The very thought of Aunt Hannah seemed to bring some peace to Rhoda's tempest-tossed spirit. "I know what she would say," thought the poor girl. "She would say that I had done very wrong, but that was no reason why I should go on doing wrong. She would tell me to confess my sin and ask forgiveness and grace to do better. But oh, how can I? I knew I was wrong. I knew I was deceiving and helping Isa to deceive, and yet I was so selfish, so bent on having my own way, that I kept on, though something warned me all the time. And yet—Oh yes, I must ask forgiveness for myself and Isa. Poor girl! I wonder what her father will do to her? I feel worse about her than even for myself." Rhoda knelt down by her bedside, and humbly and with many tears confessed her sin and asked forgiveness in His name who said, "Not seven times, but seventy times seven." She was still kneeling when some one tapped lightly at the door. She started up and opened it, thinking of Isa, but it was Mrs. Ferrand who had knocked. She had been crying as well as Rhoda, and looked even more unhappy. "Oh, Rhoda, how could you?" said she, in a half whisper. And then, with a fresh burst of tears, "I am sure I liked you and trusted you more than any girl I ever had. I thought you were almost perfect. And now Mr. Ferrand says it is just what he expected and what I might have known. Why wouldn't you be contented to read the books he gave you, and not get out of your station into algebra and geometry and all such things?" Despite her grief and shame, Rhoda could hardly forbear smiling.