ed up like a
spring on hearing the door open.

Perceiving that it was Elizabeth she lapsed into ease, and came across
to her with a reckless skip that innate grace only prevented from being
boisterous.

"Why, you are late," she said, taking hold of Elizabeth-Jane's hands.

"There were so many little things to put up."

"And you seem dead-alive and tired. Let me try to enliven you by some
wonderful tricks I have learnt, to kill time. Sit there and don't move."
She gathered up the pack of cards, pulled the table in front of her, and
began to deal them rapidly, telling Elizabeth to choose some.

"Well, have you chosen?" she asked flinging down the last card.

"No," stammered Elizabeth, arousing herself from a reverie. "I forgot, I
was thinking of--you, and me--and how strange it is that I am here."

Miss Templeman looked at Elizabeth-Jane with interest, and laid down the
cards. "Ah! never mind," she said. "I'll lie here while you sit by me;
and we'll talk."

Elizabeth drew up silently to the head of the sofa, but with obvious
pleasure. It could be seen that though in years she was younger than her
entertainer in manner and general vision she seemed more of the sage.
Miss Templeman deposited herself on the sofa in her former flexuous
position, and throwing her arm above her brow--somewhat in the pose of
a well-known conception of Titian's--talked up at Elizabeth-Jane
invertedly across her forehead and arm.

"I must tell you something," she said. "I wonder if you have suspected
it. I have only been mistress of a large house and fortune a little
while."

"Oh--only a little while?" murmured Elizabeth-Jane, her countenance
slightly falling.

"As a girl I lived about in garrison towns and elsewhere with my father,
till I was quite flighty and unsettled. He was an officer in the army. I
should not have mentioned this had I not thought it best you should know
the truth."

"Yes, yes." She looked thoughtfully round the room--at the little square
piano with brass inlayings, at the window-curtains, at the lamp, at the
fair and dark kings and queens on the card-table, and finally at the
inverted face of Lucetta Templeman, whose large lustrous eyes had such
an odd effect upside down.

Elizabeth's mind ran on acquirements to an almost morbid degree. "You
speak French and Italian fluently, no doubt," she said. "I have not been
able to get beyond a wretched bit of Latin yet."

"Well, for that matter, in my native isle spe