not even write about it to her father, and had no outlet for the violence of emotion that racked her being.
The next Sunday Rhoda was alone in Sunday School, Muriel Porter having been suddenly summoned back to town by her father’s illness; and Rhoda looked sweetly towards Emily. But Emily sailed past her with a head held very high and scorn on every lineament. She would never have anything to do with Rhoda Stuart again—she couldn’t. She despised Rhoda more than ever for trying to get back with her, now that the town girl for whom she had sacrificed her was gone. It was not for Rhoda she mourned—it was for the friendship that had been so dear to her. Rhoda had been dear and sweet on the surface at least, and Emily had found intense happiness in their companionship. Now it was gone and she could never, never love or trust anybody again. There lay the sting.
It poisoned everything. Emily was of a nature which, even as a child, did not readily recover from or forget such a blow. She moped about New Moon, lost her appetite and grew thin. She hated to go to Sunday School because she thought the other girls exulted in her humiliation and her estrangement from Rhoda. Some slight feeling of the kind there was, perhaps, but Emily morbidly exaggerated it. If two girls whispered or giggled together she thought she was being discussed and laughed at. If one of them walked home with her she thought it was out of condescending pity because she was friendless. For a month Emily was the most unhappy little being in Blair Water.
“I think I must have been put under a curse at birth,” she reflected disconsolately.
Aunt Elizabeth had a more prosaic idea to account for Emily’s languor and lack of appetite. She had come to the conclusion that Emily’s heavy masses of hair “took from her strength” and that she would be much stronger and better if it were cut off. With Aunt Elizabeth to
