But oh, I was so lonely! Never in my life since--no, not even when I was
in my lowest depths--have I felt so little and helpless and alone. After
the Sister had gone to bed and everything was quiet in the Dormitory
save for the breathing of the girls--all strangers to me and I to
them--from mere loneliness I covered up my head in the clothes just as I
used to do when I was a little thing and my father came into my mother's
room.
I try not to think bitterly of my father, but even yet I am at a loss to
know how he could have cast me away so lightly. Was it merely that he
wanted peace for his business and saw no chance of securing it in his
own home except by removing the chief cause of Aunt Bridget's jealousy?
Or was it that his old grudge against Fate for making me a girl made him
wish to rid himself of the sight of me?
I do not know. I cannot say. But in either case I try in vain to see how
he could have thought he had a right, caring nothing for me, to tear me
from the mother who loved me and had paid for me so dear; or how he
could have believed that because he was my father, charged with the care
of my poor little body, he had control over the little bleeding heart
which was not his to make to suffer.
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