Simeon." The coincidence worked so on her imagination that
she sank into the nearest chair trembling from head to foot, and then
she reflected that she must have pulled the card out of the table
drawer when she went to fetch the portfolio the night before, and she
called herself a superstitious _silly_, and made her bath a little
colder than usual, as a tonic to her nerves. Cold water and hot food
work wonders, and after breakfast young Mrs. Ponsonby forgot she had
ever had a predecessor.

Her family paid her flying visits during the day, with a freedom
unknown in Simeon's reign, and she worked hard at her preparations for
renting, but in the evening, when the house was quiet, she settled
herself at the study table and made her first attempt at story
writing, this time steering clear of the personal note that had
brought such swift reprisal the night before. The occupation was
absorbing; she neither desired nor missed companionship. She was not
the first person to find life's stage amply filled by the puppets of
her own imagination.

At the end of the week two things had happened. _The Illuminator_ had
accepted her poem, and her story was finished. She determined to
submit it to Stephen, and yet when he looked in at five o'clock, she
was ashamed to ask him; what she had thought so well of the night
before, in the excitement of work, suddenly seemed to her beneath
contempt.

He lingered later than usual, for he mistook her preoccupation for
unhappiness, and hated to leave her alone.

"When do you move to your mother's?" he asked, for he thought anything
better than her present desolation; the genteel poverty brought about
by Mr. Shelton's habits, the worldliness of Mrs. Shelton, and the
demands upon time and temper made by the younger brothers and sisters,
were only the old conditions under which she had grown up.

"Next week," she said, sadly. "I shall be sorry to leave here."

"You are not lonely, then, poor little lady?" he said, kindly, while
he searched her face to see whether she told the whole truth.

His eyes were so merry, his smile so encouraging, that Deena blurted
out her request.

"I haven't felt lonely," she said, "because I have been writing a
foolish story, and my characters have been my companions. I am sure it
is no good, and yet my head is a little turned at having expressed
myself on paper. Like Dr. Johnson's simile of the dog walking on its
hind legs, the wonder isn't to find it ill done,