She managed to change the turn of conversation after this. Miss
MacDowlas had good-naturedly left them alone, and so she began to ask
Phemie questions,--questions about school and lessons and companions,
about the lady principal and the under-teachers and about the professor
with the lumpy face; and, despite appearances being against her, there
was still the old ring in her girl's jests.

"Has madame got a new bonnet yet," she asked, "or does she still wear
the old one with those aggressive-looking spikes of wheat in it? The
lean ears ought to have eaten up the fat ones by this time."

"But they have n't," returned Phemie. "They are there yet, Dolly. Just
the same spikes in the same bonnet, only she has had new saffron-colored
ribbon put on it, just the shade of her skin."

Dolly shuddered,--Lady Augusta's own semi-tragic shudder, if Phemie had
only recognized it.

"Phemie," she said, with a touch of pardonable anxiety, "ill as I look,
I am not that color, am I? To lose one's figure and grow thin is bad
enough, but to become like Madame Pillet--dear me!" shaking her head. "I
scarcely think I could reconcile myself to existence."

Phemie laughed. "You are not changed in one respect, Dolly," she said.
"When I hear you talk it makes me feel quite--quite safe."

"Safe!" Dolly echoed. "You mean to say that so long as I preserve my
constitutional vanity, your anxiety won't overpower you. But--but,"
looking at her curiously, "did you think at first that I was not safe,
as you call it?"

"You looked so ill," faltered Phemie. "And--I was so startled."

"Were you?" asked Dolly. "Did I shock you?"

"A little--only just a little, dear," deprecatingly.

Then strangely enough fell upon them a silence. Dolly turned toward the
window, and her eyes seemed to fix themselves upon some far-away point,
as if she was pondering over a new train of thought. And when at last
she spoke, her voice was touched with the tremulous unsteadiness of
tears.

"Do you think," she said, slowly,--"do you think that _any one_ who had
loved me would be shocked to see me now? Am I so much altered as
that? One scarcely sees these things one's self,--they come to pass so
gradually."

All poor Phemie's smiles died away.

"Don't let us talk about it," she pleaded. "I cannot bear to hear you
speak so. Don't, dear--if you please, don't!"

Her pain was so evident that it roused Dolly at once.

"I won't, if it troubles you," she said, almost in h