uman beings. With the exception of Windebank,
she had not been friendly with a rich person since she had been a
child, so could not, at present, have any opinion of how much happiness
the wealthy enjoyed; but she could not help remarking how much joy and
contentment she had encountered in the person seemingly most unlikely
to be thus blessed. At this period of her life, it did not occur to her
that the natural and proper egoism of the human mind finds expression
in a vanity, that, if happily unchastened by knowledge or experience,
is a source of undiluted joy to the possessor.

If time be measured by the amount of suffering endured, it was a little
later that Mavis realised that to be ignorant is to be often happy,
enlightenment begetting desires that there is no prospect of staying,
and, therefore, discontentment ensues.

When Mavis next visited Miss Nippett, she rummaged, at her friend's
request, in the cupboard containing the unclaimed "overs" for finery
with which the accompanist wished to decorate her exalted state. If
Miss Nippett had had her way and had appeared in the street wearing the
gaudy, fluffy things she picked out, she would have been put down as a
disreputable old lady. But, for all Miss Nippett's resolves, it was
written in the book of fate that she was to take but one more journey
out of doors, and that in the simplest of raiment. For all her
prodigious elation at her public association with Mr Poulter, her
health far from improved; her strength declined daily; she wasted away
before Mavis' dismayed eyes. She did not suffer, but dozed away the
hours with increasingly rare intervals in which she was stark awake. On
these latter occasions, for all the latent happiness which had come
into her life, she would fret because Mr Poulter rarely called to
inquire after her health. Such was her distress at this remissness on
the part of the dancing master, that more often than not, when Miss
Nippett, after waking from sleep, asked with evident concern if Mr
Poulter had been, Mavis would reply:

"Yes. But he didn't like to come upstairs and disturb you."

For five or six occasions Miss Nippett accepted this explanation, but,
at last, she became skeptical of Mavis' statements.

"Funny 'e always comes when I'm asleep!" she would say. "S'pose he was
too busy to send up 'is name an' chance waking me. Tell those stories
to them as swallers them."

But a time came when Miss Nippett was too ill even to fret. For t