n this world. Tears came to
Mavis's eyes whenever she thought of it. Orphaned, friendless, with no
one to give her the affection for which her lonely soul craved, Mavis
had stayed on at Brandenburg College, where the little her father had
left sufficed to pay for her board and schooling. This sum lasted till
she was sixteen, when, having passed one or two trumpery examinations,
she was taken on the staff of the college. The last few months, Mavis's
eyes had been opened to the straitened circumstances in which her
employers lived; she had lately realised that she owed her bread and
butter more to the kindness of the Miss Mees, than to the fact of her
parts as a teacher being in request at the school. She informed the
kind ladies that she was going to seek her bread elsewhere; upon their
offering the mildest of protests, she had made every effort to
translate her intentions into performance.

This was by no means an easy matter for a comparatively friendless
girl, as Mavis soon discovered. Her numerous applications had, so far,
only resulted in an expenditure of stationery and postage stamps. Then,
Miss Annie Mee kindly volunteered to write to the more prosperously
circumstanced of the few one-time pupils with whom she had kept up
something of a correspondence. Those who replied offered no suggestion
of help, with the exception of Mrs Devitt. So much for the past: the
future stretched, an unexplored country, before her, which, to one of
her sanguine disposition, seemed to offer boundless opportunities of
happiness. It appeared a strange conjunction of circumstances that she
should have been sent for by a person living in her native place. It
seemed fortuitous to Mavis that she should earn her bread in a
neighbourhood where she would be known, if only because of the high
reputation which her dear father had enjoyed. It all seemed as if it
had been arranged like something out of a book. Amelia's words,
referring to the certainty of her marrying, came into her mind; she
tried to dismiss them, but without success. Then, her thoughts flew
back to Charlie Perigal and Archie Windebank, youthful admirers, rivals
for her favours. She wondered what had become of them; if she should
see them again: a thousand things in which she allowed her imagination
to wing itself in sentimental flight.

She was of an ardent temperament; men attracted her, although, since
she had been grown up, she had never exchanged anything that could be
con