Maintain your confidence

"Yes, tell him," cried Miss Fernly, "that I may be cleared of my part in this transaction. You deceived me as well."

In a faltering voice that sounded as though she were dying, Ida May told her story, the man she had married listening intently.

He did not speak until she had concluded, but Miss Fernly saw that the girl's story was greatly affecting him.
For one moment Ida May stood irresolute. She now realized what she had done, and wondered how Hildegarde would take the terrible mistake.

For a moment the three stood silent. Who would[124] be the one to break the terrible news to Hildegarde?

"What is the matter, and who is this beautiful young girl, clad in bridal robes, whom you hold by the hand, Eugene?"

He tried to speak, but he could not utter a word if his life had depended upon it. Even Miss Fernly seemed to have been stricken dumb. Ida May knew that it devolved upon her to utter the words which would stab Hildegarde Cramer to the very soul. She saw the lover try to speak, and fail, and also saw Miss Fernly's lips twitch convulsively.

Nerving herself for the ordeal through which she must pass, she stepped forward.

"Let me answer for them," she said, in a voice that sounded to Hildegarde's ears like the strain of some half-forgotten melody. And as she uttered the words she threw back her veil .

"Ida May!" cried Hildegarde, aghast.
Those who saw the look of pity in the face of Hildegarde[126] would never forget it.

Her face became as pale as marble; the blood receded from the ripe-red lips.

She passed through a life-time of woe in those few minutes. She did not look at Ida May or her lover when the former ceased speaking, but she turned her white, set, tragic face to her aunt.

From the very first this little boy was full of promise and very attractive. This fact is rather hard on some of us, is it not, who find it difficult to be good and to win the confidence of grown-up people. But the confidence of others is precisely what the boy Alfred did win, and it was not because he was a molly-coddle, for no -ax more lustily than did Alfred .

When he was a little bit of a chap only five years old, he was taken to Rome to see the Pope. Alfred was born in 849 at the town of Wantage, so you know what year it was when he went to[Pg 50] Rome. The Pope took a great fancy to him and hallowed him as his "bishop's son." Just how old this charming boy was when he began to read we do not know. At that time, of course, all boys read Latin, for there were no English books to read. But there is an old English couplet—a couplet is two lines of verse with a rhyme at the end of each line—which may tell the story of Alfred's reading:
At writing he was good enough, and yet as he telleth me, He was more than ten years old ere he knew his A B C.

Alfred may have been younger or older than this. We don't know, and the probability is that we never shall know. This little boy was much loved by his father, King Ethelwulf, and his mother, Queen Osburh. He had many brothers and sisters, and was himself the fifth child. But he was a finer-looking boy than the others, and more graceful in his way of speaking and in his manners.