me
feel as if I were more superfluous than ever, for Vere would not need me
when she had her best friend at hand, and, somehow or other, Will Dudley
was just the last person in the world I wanted to see just then. There
was nothing for it, however; I had to go upstairs and stand the horrible
ordeal of being cross-questioned about my unexpected return.

"Don't tell me it is an outbreak of small-pox!" cried Lady Mary,
huddling back in her chair, and pretending to shudder at my approach.
"That's the worst of staying in a doctor's house--you simply court
infection! If it's anything interesting and becoming, you may kiss me
as usual, but if it's small-pox or mumps, I implore you to keep at the
other end of the room! I'm not sure that mumps wouldn't be the worse of
the two. I can't endure to look fat!"

"Has Lorna turned out a villain in disguise? Have you quarrelled and
bidden each other a tragic farewell?" asked Vere laughingly.

She looked thinner than ever, but her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes
as bright as stars. As for Will Dudley, he stared at the pattern of the
carpet, and his eyebrows twitched in the impatient way I know so well.
I think he saw that I was really in trouble, and was vexed with the
girls for teasing me.

"Thank you, everyone was quite well when I left. You need not be afraid
of infection, and Lorna is nicer than ever. We have certainly not
quarrelled."

"Then why this thusness?" asked Lady Mary, and Vere burst into a laugh.

"Scalps, Babs, scalps! I see it all! My mind misgave me as soon as I
heard of the fascinating Wallace. And was it really so serious that you
had to fly at a moment's notice?"

I simply got up and marched out of the room. It was too much to bear.
I sat in my own room all alone for over an hour, and hated everybody.
Oh, I _was_ miserable!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_11 PM._
I have been thinking seriously over things, and have decided to put away
this diary, and not write in it any more for six months or a year. It
will be better so, for at present I am in such a wretched, unsettled
state of mind that what I write would not be edifying, but only painful
to read in time to come.

I've been reading over the first few pages to-night, and they seem
written by quite a different person--a happy, self-confident, complacent
Una, who felt perfectly satis