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Rh its throng of lookers-on, scarcely shed any light upon her anxious and fearful heart; she only felt that to-night the crowd at the theater would be noisier and more dense, her duty only more repulsive to her—finally, that all this bustle and confusion was to terminate in a ball, at which she was to pass



through a fiery ordeal of frowns and comments, even through worse, perhaps more dreadful, trials. She had not dared that morning, when her father told her he should expect her to keep her promise and accompany the young man after the theater to the ball—the poor girl had not dared to speak of her secret,