"Read that," he said sternly, "and tell me what it means." Kitty took the letter, but she was so bewildered and troubled by her father's manner, and the mystery, and her own dread, that she gazed at it for seconds, unable to take in a word that it contained.
"Well ?" "I--I haven't read it yet, father," she stammered.

"Do tell me; is it-- is it anything about Dan ?" Dr.Trenire looked at her very searchingly.

"This is not the time for trifling, Kitty," he said.

"The letter is about you, I am sorry to say.
I am so shocked, so grieved, and astonished at what it tells me, that I--I cannot make myself believe it unless you tell me that I must.
Read it." Kitty read it this time--read it with the blood rushing over her face and neck, her eyes smarting, her cheeks tingling; and as she more and more clearly grasped the meaning, her heart beat hot and fast with indignation.
When she looked up, her hurt, shamed eyes struck reproach to Dr.
Trenire's heart.

"Father, you didn't--you didn't think that I--I--that what that letter says is true ?" The feeling that he had, if only for a moment, done so hurt her far more than did the letter, which was from Miss Richards.
"It had been discovered," wrote Miss Richards, evidently in a great state of wrath and indignation, "that one of the boarders had been in the habit of writing to and receiving surreptitious letters from a person with whom she had been forbidden to correspond.