right to do so.
I do not know what would become of you, Anastasia, if anything were to
happen to me."

"That is exactly what he says, that is the very argument which he uses.
Why should you take such a gloomy view of things? Why should something
_happening_ always mean something bad. Let us hope something good will
happen, that someone else will make me a better offer." She laughed,
and went on reflectively: "I wonder whether Mr Westray will come back
here to lodge; I hope he won't."

Hardly were the words out of her mouth when she was sorry for uttering
them, for she saw the look of sadness which overspread Miss Joliffe's
face.

"Dear aunt," she cried, "I am so sorry; I didn't mean to say that. I
know what a difference it would make; we cannot afford to lose our last
lodger. I hope he _will_ come back, and I will do everything I can to
make things comfortable, short of marrying him. I will earn some money
myself. I will _write_."

"How will you write? Who is there to write to?" Miss Joliffe said, and
then the blank look on her face grew blanker, and she took out her
handkerchief. "There is no one to help us. Anyone who ever cared for
us is dead long ago; there is no one to write to now."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Westray played the role of rejected lover most conscientiously; he
treated the episode of his refusal on strictly conventional lines. He
assured himself and his mother that the light of his life was
extinguished, that he was the most unhappy of mortals. It was at this
time that he wrote some verses called "Autumn," with a refrain of--

"For all my hopes are cold and dead,
And fallen like the fallen leaves,"

which were published in the _Clapton Methodist_, and afterwards set to
music by a young lady who wished to bind up another wounded heart. He
attempted to lie awake of nights with indifferent success, and hinted in
conversation at the depressing influence which insomnia exerts over its
victims. For several meals in succession he refused to eat heartily of
such dishes as he did not like, and his mother felt serious anxiety as
to his general state of health. She inveighed intemperately against
Anastasia for having refused her son, but then she would have inveighed
still more intemperately had Anastasia accepted him. She wearied him
with the portentous gloom which she affected in his presence, and quoted
Lady Clara Vere de Vere's cruelty in turning honest hearts to gall, till
ev