out. "If there is in
Ginevra one spark of worthiness of your affection, she will--she _must_
feel devotion in return. Be cheerful, be hopeful, Dr. John. Who should
hope, if not you?"

In return for this speech I got--what, it must be supposed, I
deserved--a look of surprise: I thought also of some disapprobation. We
parted, and I went into the house very chill. The clocks struck and the
bells tolled midnight; people were leaving fast: the fete was over; the
lamps were fading. In another hour all the dwelling-house, and all the
pensionnat, were dark and hushed. I too was in bed, but not asleep. To
me it was not easy to sleep after a day of such excitement.

CHAPTER XV.

THE LONG VACATION.

Following Madame Beck's fete, with its three preceding weeks of
relaxation, its brief twelve hours' burst of hilarity and dissipation,
and its one subsequent day of utter languor, came a period of reaction;
two months of real application, of close, hard study. These two months,
being the last of the "annee scolaire," were indeed the only genuine
working months in the year. To them was procrastinated--into them
concentrated, alike by professors, mistresses, and pupils--the main
burden of preparation for the examinations preceding the distribution
of prizes. Candidates for rewards had then to work in good earnest;
masters and teachers had to set their shoulders to the wheel, to urge
on the backward, and diligently aid and train the more promising. A
showy demonstration--a telling exhibition--must be got up for public
view, and all means were fair to this end.

I scarcely noted how the other teachers went to work; I had my own
business to mind; and _my_ task was not the least onerous, being to
imbue some ninety sets of brains with a due tincture of what they
considered a most complicated and difficult science, that of the
English language; and to drill ninety tongues in what, for them, was an
almost impossible pronunciation--the lisping and hissing dentals of the
Isles.

The examination-day arrived. Awful day! Prepared for with anxious care,
dressed for with silent despatch--nothing vaporous or fluttering
now--no white gauze or azure streamers; the grave, close, compact was
the order of the toilette. It seemed to me that I was this day,
especially doomed--the main burden and trial falling on me alone of all
the female teachers. The others were not expected to examine in the
studies they taught; the professor of literature