mpulse
which set her talking, with an uneasy affectation of frivolity, of any
topic within the range of conversation, so long as it related to the
future, and completely ignored the present and the past.

"The winter here is unendurable," Lady Janet began. "I have been
thinking, Grace, about what we had better do next."

Mercy started. Lady Janet had called her "Grace." Lady Janet was still
deliberately assuming to be innocent of the faintest suspicion of the
truth.

"No," resumed her ladyship, affecting to misunderstand Mercy's
movement, "you are not to go up now and dress. There is no time, and I
am quite ready to excuse you. You are a foil to me, my dear. You have
reached the perfection of shabbiness. Ah! I remember when I had my whims
and fancies too, and when I looked well in anything I wore, just as you
do. No more of that. As I was saying, I have been thinking and planning
what we are to do. We really can't stay here. Cold one day, and hot the
next--what a climate! As for society, what do we lose if we go away?
There is no such thing as society now. Assemblies of well-dressed mobs
meet at each other's houses, tear each other's clothes, tread on each
other's toes. If you are particularly lucky, you sit on the staircase,
you get a tepid ice, and you hear vapid talk in slang phrases all
round you. There is modern society. If we had a good opera, it would be
something to stay in London for. Look at the programme for the season
on that table--promising as much as possible on paper, and performing
as little as possible on the stage. The same works, sung by the same
singers year after year, to the same stupid people--in short the dullest
musical evenings in Europe. No! the more I think of it, the more plainly
I perceive that there is but one sensible choice before us: we must go
abroad. Set that pretty head to work; choose north or south, east or
west; it's all the same to me. Where shall we go?"

Mercy looked at her quickly as she put the question.

Lady Janet, more quickly yet, looked away at the programme of the
opera-house. Still the same melancholy false pretenses! still the same
useless and cruel delay! Incapable of enduring the position now forced
upon her, Mercy put her hand into the pocket of her apron, and drew from
it Lady Janet's letter.

"Will your ladyship forgive me," she began, in faint, faltering tones,
"if I venture on a painful subject? I hardly dare acknowledge--" In
spite of her resolution to