oing to
moralize.

'Well, what I mean is, that your father would not like to live upon your
earnings, and so forth. But in town we shall be near him--that's one
comfort, certainly.'

'And I shall not be wanted at all,' said Picotee, in a melancholy tone.

'It is much better to stay where you are,' her mother said. 'You will
come and spend the holidays with us, of course, as you do now.'

'I should like to live in London best,' murmured Picotee, her head
sinking mournfully to one side. 'I HATE being in Sandbourne now!'

'Nonsense!' said Ethelberta severely. 'We are all contriving how to live
most comfortably, and it is by far the best thing for you to stay at the
school. You used to be happy enough there.'

Picotee sighed, and said no more.

16. A LARGE PUBLIC HALL

It was the second week in February, Parliament had just met, and
Ethelberta appeared for the first time before an audience in London.

There was some novelty in the species of entertainment that the active
young woman had proposed to herself, and this doubtless had due effect in
collecting the body of strangers that greeted her entry, over and above
those friends who came to listen to her as a matter of course. Men and
women who had become totally indifferent to new actresses, new readers,
and new singers, once more felt the freshness of curiosity as they
considered the promise of the announcement. But the chief inducement to
attend lay in the fact that here was to be seen in the flesh a woman with
whom the tongue of rumour had been busy in many romantic ways--a woman
who, whatever else might be doubted, had certainly produced a volume of
verses which had been the talk of the many who had read them, and of the
many more who had not, for several consecutive weeks.

What was her story to be? Persons interested in the inquiry--a small
proportion, it may be owned, of the whole London public, and chiefly
young men--answered this question for themselves by assuming that it
would take the form of some pungent and gratifying revelation of the
innermost events of her own life, from which her gushing lines had sprung
as an inevitable consequence, and which being once known, would cause
such musical poesy to appear no longer wonderful.

The front part of the room was well filled, rows of listeners showing
themselves like a drilled-in crop of which not a seed has failed. They
were listeners of the right sort, a majority having noses of the
p