panted
alongside the now moving train, crying:

"You'd better let me come with you, now, Miss Diana your Ladyship. . . ."

The latter only waved her hand in kind but firm dismissal.

"Go home and look after papa, Marney, and don't worry about me. I shall
be back soon." As the train took a jump and finally fled from the
station, leaving Marney far behind, she added thoughtfully, "I don't
think!" and burst out laughing.

"Just as though I _would_ hurry back to frowsy old England the first time
I've ever managed to get away from it on my own!"

The other girl looked at her with deep, reflective eyes.

"If you had been on your own as much as I have you wouldn't think it such
a catch," she remarked, with a little dry smile.

"Oh, wouldn't I! I can't imagine anything more heavenly than having no
relations in the world. It must be perfect paradise!"

"It's the paradise I have lived in for three years," said April Poole
sombrely, "and any one who likes it can have it, and give me their hell
instead."

"What!" cried Diana Vernilands, not sympathetic, but astounded and eager.
She stared at the other with envious, avid eyes that filled and
brightened at last with an amazing plan. It burst from her like a shell
from a gun. "_Let's change places: I be you, and you be me!_"

April considered her, and being very weary of her own destiny, considered
the plan also. But though she was as ardent as any one for flyaway
schemes and fantastic adventure, this plan looked to her too
Arabian-nightish altogether, and not likely to hold water for more than
the length of the journey from Waterloo to Southampton.

"How can we? I am a poverty-stricken girl, going out to governess at the
Cape. You, a peer's daughter, I suppose, who will be met on the boat and
surrounded by every care and attention. . . ."

"Yes, surrounded!" Diana interrupted savagely. With sudden fury she tore
off the little sable hat, flung it on the seat beside her and stabbed it
viciously with a great pearl pin. "I'm sick of being surrounded! I wish
to goodness I were Alexander Selkirk, shipwrecked on a desert island."

"That wouldn't be much fun, either," said April. "I don't think there is
much fun anywhere. We have all got what we don't want, and want what we
can't get."

"You couldn't _not_ want a face like yours," said Diana, handsomely. It
gave her no pain, as has been mentioned before, because April was dark.
If she had been addressing a blo