her. "I shall
begin to put some faith in you presently."

I knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so that a
ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however, as she
sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it illumined.

"I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night," she said, when she
had examined me a while. "I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart
during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting
before you like shapes in a magic-lantern: just as little sympathetic
communion passing between you and them as if they were really mere
shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance."

"I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad."

"Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with
whispers of the future?"

"Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings to
set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself."

"A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on: and sitting in that window-
seat (you see I know your habits )--"

"You have learned them from the servants."

"Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have: to speak truth, I
have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole--"

I started to my feet when I heard the name.

"You have--have you?" thought I; "there is diablerie in the business
after all, then!"

"Don't be alarmed," continued the strange being; "she's a safe hand is
Mrs. Poole: close and quiet; any one may repose confidence in her. But,
as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing but
your future school? Have you no present interest in any of the company
who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not one face you
study? one figure whose movements you follow with at least curiosity?"

"I like to observe all the faces and all the figures."

"But do you never single one from the rest--or it may be, two?"

"I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling a
tale: it amuses me to watch them."

"What tale do you like best to hear?"

"Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same
theme--courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe--marriage."

"And do you like that monotonous theme?"

"Positively, I don't care about it: it is nothing to me."

"Nothing to you? When a lady, young and full of life and health,
charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank