She was mortified at being dismissed and ashamed at the circumstances which led to the dismissal, and she was broken-hearted at parting with Isa, whom she had learned to love with all the intensity of a school-girl's affection. She had never been much given to striking up those sudden and violent intimacies common among girls, and which are often as short-lived as fervent. She had been a favourite with all the girls at Boonville, but she had been specially intimate with none of them except Alice Brown, who had gone away to the far West a year before. But she loved Isa Ferrand with all her heart, and none the less that she was not insensible to Isa's faults and weaknesses. And now they must part, and would probably never see any more of each other. They might sometimes meet in the street, but there could be no visiting and no correspondence—they could hardly even stop to talk, because Isa would be disobeying her father. It was very, very hard. Rhoda fell easily enough into her old life at "The Home." Neither Miss Carpenter nor the good managers were disposed to be hard upon her, considering the temptations to which she had been exposed. "You should not have done it, of course," said Mrs. Mulford. "Deceit is and must be always wrong. But I think Mr. Ferrand made a very unnecessary fuss about the matter. I dare say you would have felt twice as penitent if he had given you permission to practise every day." "I don't know. I was very sorry as it was," said Rhoda. "But I did feel a great deal more so that day he talked so kindly to me." "How was that?" asked Mrs. Mulford. Rhoda repeated the substance of the conversation which had taken place in the library. "He was just so kind, and even kinder, all that week, till the afternoon Mr. Weightman called, and after that he never spoke to me again till he paid me my wages when I came away. I can't help thinking Mr. Weightman set him against me. He has always been my enemy. I am quite sure that Mr. and Mrs. Bowers would not have sent me away but for him." "It hardly seems as if any one could be so meanly spiteful as that, and toward a young girl," remarked Mrs. Mulford. "And yet I know narrow-minded, ignorant people will carry enmity to great lengths sometimes." "I know he does. There was a woman lived next him with whom he had a quarrel. She was an ignorant, hot-tempered woman, and used rather hard language sometimes, but that was the worst of her. Well, he got angry at her for something about a grapevine, and he went to the man whose house she lived in and told him such stories about her that he got her turned out of her house. I don't really think, either, that he means to tell downright lies, but he thinks that any one who opposes him must be everything that is bad."