Family misfortunes have
very materially lowered her position in the world."

He was reminded, as he said those words, of the time when Miss Minerva
had entered on her present employment, and when she had been the object
of some little curiosity on his own part. Mrs. Gallilee's answer, when
he once asked why she kept such an irritable woman in the house, had
been entirely satisfactory, so far as she herself was concerned: "Miss
Minerva is remarkably well informed, and I get her cheap." Exactly
like his mother! But it left Miss Minerva's motives involved in utter
obscurity. Why had this highly cultivated woman accepted an inadequate
reward for her services, for years together? Why--to take the event of
that morning as another example--after plainly showing her temper to her
employer, had she been so ready to submit to a suddenly decreed holiday,
which disarranged her whole course of lessons for the week? Little
did Ovid think that the one reconciling influence which adjusted these
contradictions, and set at rest every doubt that grew out of them, was
to be found in himself. Even the humiliation of watching him in his
mother's interest, and of witnessing his devotion to another woman,
was a sacrifice which Miss Minerva could endure for the one inestimable
privilege of being in Ovid's company.

Before Carmina could ask any more questions a shrill voice, at its
highest pitch of excitement, called her away. Zo had just discovered
the most amusing bird in the Gardens--the low comedian of the feathered
race--otherwise known as the Piping Crow.

Carmina hurried to the cage as if she had been a child herself. Seeing
Ovid left alone, the governess seized _her_ chance of speaking to him.
The first words that passed her lips told their own story. While Carmina
had been studying Miss Minerva, Miss Minerva had been studying Carmina.
Already, the same instinctive sense of rivalry had associated, on
a common ground of feeling, the two most dissimilar women that ever
breathed the breath of life.

"Does your cousin know much about birds?" Miss Minerva began.

The opinion which declares that vanity is a failing peculiar to the sex
is a slander on women. All the world over, there are more vain men in it
than vain women. If Ovid had not been one of the exceptions to a general
rule among men, or even if his experience of the natures of women had
been a little less limited, he too might have discovered Miss Minerva's
secret. Even her cap