While these thoughts were coursing through the poor girl's brain, there came another knock at the door; an insistent and somewhat fierce one this time. The handle was sharply turned, and the clear voice of Alice was heard. "Open the door at once, please, Kitty," she said. Kitty crossed the room, turned the key in the lock, and allowed Alice to enter. "I must beg of you, Kitty," said Alice, "not to lock the door again." "And why not, pray? You locked it last night. It was on account of that I am now in all this trouble." "Really, Kitty, you are quite too ridiculous; as if I were the cause of your trouble. You are in trouble because you disobeyed a strict rule; and my locking the door or not had nothing whatever to do with it. You are quite the most tiresome, inconsistent girl I ever came across." "Well, it is nothing to you what I am," said Kitty. She sank down on a chair by the side of her little bed as she spoke; her expression was so woe-begone, her face so pale, the droop of her eyes so pathetic, that Alice was slightly touched in spite of herself. "I am going to see Bessie Challoner," she said. "If you were different I would not leave you." "Oh, never mind me, pray." "All the same, I would not leave you, Kitty; for remember I am the only girl belonging to the school who may speak to you for the next week; but, really, your ways are so unpleasant----" "And I so infinitely prefer your absence to your company," retorted Kitty. "So you may go with quite an easy mind." "Thanks awfully," replied Alice, with a sneer. Her momentary good-nature had dried up like the dew. She put on her hat, wrapped a shawl round her shoulders and left the room. Kitty returned to her place by the window. It was now between eight and nine o'clock. She had refused both dinner and tea, and was in consequence feeling weak and faint. There was a giddy sensation in her head to which she was not accustomed. She did not connect it with the fact that she was starving, and wondered what was the matter with her. She was too excited and wretched to feel her ordinary appetite. She had gone through a great deal, and her nerves were reminding her of the cruel trick she was playing on them. It was very dull in her room; the gas jet shed a hideous glare over the place. The room in itself was by no means pretty, for the paper was the worse for wear, and the paint was nearly worn through to the woodwork. The hangings to the windows and to the two little beds were of an ugly drab color; and the view out of these windows only revealed a narrow street. At Kitty's own home she had a bedroom in the Castle end; the paper hung in ribbons, the door was draughty, the bedstead rickety and old; but what a view there was from the windows! A view of Lake Coulin and the mountains in the distance, and the park lying verdant and green between the lake and the house. What a breeze blew in at those windows!