When the band stopped playing, and Ellen, who as valedictorian came last as the crown and capsheaf of it all, stepped forward from the semicircle of white-clad girls and seriously abashed boys, there was a subdued murmur and then a hush all over the hall. Andrew and Fanny and the grandmother, seated directly in front of the stage--for they had come early to secure good seats--heard whispers of admiration on every side. It was admiration with no dissent--such jealous ears as theirs could not be deceived. Fanny's face was blazing with the sweet shame of pride in her child; Andrew was pale; the grandmother sat as if petrified, with a proud toss of her head. They looked straight ahead; they dared not encounter each other's eyes, for they were more self-conscious than Ellen. They felt the attention of the whole assembly upon them. Andrew was conscious of feeling ill and faint. His own joy seemed to overwhelm him. He forgot his stocks, he forgot his borrowed money, he forgot Lloyd's; he was perfectly happy at the sight of that beautiful young creature of his own heart, who was preferred before all others in the sight of the whole city. In truth, there was about Ellen a majesty and nobility of youth and innocence and beauty which overawed. The other girls of the class were as young and as pretty, but none of them had that indescribable quality which seemed to raise her above them all. Ellen still kept her blond fairness, but there was nothing of the doll-like which often characterizes the blond type. Although she was small, Ellen's color had the firmness and unwavering of tinted marble; she carried her crown of yellow braids as if it had been gold; she moved and looked and spoke with decision. The violent and intense temperament which she had inherited from two sides of her family had crystallized in her to something more forcible, but also more impressive. However, she was, after all, only a young girl, scarcely more than a child, whatever her principle of underlying character might be, and when she stood there before them all--all her townspeople who represented her world, the human shore upon which her own little individuality beat--when she saw those attentive faces, row upon row, all fixed upon her, she felt her heart pound against her side; she had no sensation of the roll of paper in her hand; an awful terror as of suddenly discovered depths came over her, as the wild clapping of hands to which her appearance had given rise died away. Ellen stood still, holding the valedictory as if it had been a stick. A little wondering murmur began to be heard. Andrew felt as if he were dying. Fanny gripped his arm hard. Mrs. Zelotes had the look of one about to spring. Ellen had the terrible sensation which has in it a nightmare of inability to move, allied with the intensest consciousness. She knew that she was to read her valedictory, she knew that she must raise that white-ribboned roll and read, or else be disgraced forever, and yet she was powerless. But suddenly some compelling glance seemed to arouse her from this lock of nerve and muscle; she raised her eyes, and Cynthia Lennox, on the farther side of the hall, was gazing full at her with an indescribable gaze of passion and help and command. Her own mother's look could not have influenced her. Ellen raised her valedictory, bowed, and began to read. Andrew looked so pale that people nudged one another to look at him. Mrs. Zelotes settled back, relaxing stiffly from her fierce attitude. Fanny wiped her forehead with a cheap lace-bordered handkerchief. There was a stifled sob farther back, that came from Eva Tenny, who sat back on account of a break across the shoulders in the back of her silk dress. Amabel, anæmic and eager in a little, tawdry, cheap muslin frock, sat beside her, with worshipful eyes on Ellen. "What ailed her?" she whispered, hitting her mother with a sharp little elbow. "Hush up!" whispered Eva, angrily, surreptitiously wiping her eyes. In front, directly in her line of vision, sat the woman of whom she was jealous--the young widow, who had been Aggie Bemis, arrayed in a handsome India silk and a flower-laden hat. Eva's hat was trimmed with a draggled feather and a bunch of roses which she had tried to color with aniline dye. When she got home that night she tore the feather out of the hat and flung it across the room. She wished to do it that afternoon every time she looked at the other woman's roses against the smooth knot of her brown hair, and that repressed impulse, with her alarm at Ellen's silence, had made her almost hysterical. When Ellen's clear young voice rose and filled the hall she calmed herself.