THE CONSEQUENCES.
IT is one thing to assert one 's willingness to take the consequences of one's own action, and another to know what to do with them when they come. Molly Wilder was by no means tenderly attached to Mercy Hetherford: but she was her companion of infancy, she was the only girl she had ever familiarly associated with; she had tried to look upon her as a future sister, and she had always held a place of quiet superiority over her. When, therefore, she found her offers of assistance, in muffling her guest against the storm, angrily repulsed; when her efforts at placation produced only bitter retorts, or insulting silence; when she saw her late friend turn upon the threshold, and ostentatiously wipe the dust from off her feet, before springing into the sleigh Reuben had driven close to the step,—a pang such as she had never known in all her placid life stung through her heart. The only girl friend she had ever known repudiated and threw her off! By her own act, it was true: and not for one moment did the stanch heart waver in its determination; although, as in a flash of lurid light, she again saw the chance of many a bitterer pang, many a deeper wound, when her mother should know of her
