The Blue Castle

by L.M. Montgomery

"Why, I've never even had a quarrel with any one. I haven't an enemy. What a spineless thing I must be not to have even one enemy!"

'Despair is a free man—hope is a slave.'"

"I don't mean to hush," said Valancy perversely. "I've hush—hushed all my life. I'll scream if I want to. Don't make me want to. And

Everybody liked Cissy Gay and was sorry for her. She was so modest and sensitive and pretty in that delicate, elusive fashion of beauty which fades so quickly if life is not kept in it by love and tenderness. But then liking and pity did not prevent them from tearing her in pieces like hungry cats when the catastrophe came.

"Have you no sense of shame?" demanded Uncle James. "Oh, yes. But the things I am ashamed of are not the things you are ashamed of." Valancy proceeded to rinse her dishcloth meticulously.

"Do you realise what people will say? What they are saying?" "I can imagine it," said Valancy, with a shrug of her shoulders. She was suddenly free of fear again. "I haven't listened to the gossip of Deerwood teaparties and sewing circles twenty years for nothing. But, Dr. Stalling, it doesn't matter in the least to me what they say—not in the least." Dr. Stalling went away then. A girl who cared nothing for public opinion! Over whom sacred family ties had no restraining influence!