ppose you tell me something about your
life at home. What have you been doing all these sixteen years?"

"I had always plenty to do," Theo answered. "I helped Pamela with the
housework and the clothes-mending. We did not keep any servant, so we
were obliged to do everything for ourselves."

"You were?" said the old lady, with a side-glance at the girl's slight,
dusky hands. "How did you amuse yourself when your work was done?"

"We had not much time for amusements," Theo replied, demurely, in spite
of her discomfort under the catechism; "but sometimes, on idle days, I
read or walked on the beach with the children, or did Berlin-wool work."

"What did you read?" proceeded the august catechist. She liked to hear
the girl talk.

"Love stories," more demurely still, "and poetry, and sometimes history;
but not often history--love stories and poetry oftenest."

The clever old face was studying her with a novel sort of interest. Upon
the whole, my lady was not sorry she had sent for Theodora North.

"And, of course, being a Downport baby, you have never had a lover.
Pamela never had a lover before she came to me."

A lover. How Theodora started and blushed now to be sure!

"No, madame," she answered, and, in a perfect wonder of confusion,
dropped her eyes, and was silent.

But the very next instant she raised them again at the sound of the door
opening. Somebody was coming in, and it was evidently somebody who felt
himself at home, and at liberty to come in as he pleased, and when the
fancy took him, for he came unannounced entirely.

Theo found herself guilty of the impropriety of gazing at him
wonderingly as he came forward, but Lady Throckmorton did not seem at
all surprised.

"I have been expecting you, Denis," she said. "Good-evening! Here is
Theodora North. You know I told you about her."

Theo rose from her footstool at once, and stood up tall and straight--a
young sultana, the youngest and most innocent-looking of sultanas, in
unimperial gray satin. The gentleman was looking at her with a pair of
the handsomest eyes she had ever seen in her life.

Then he made a low, ceremonious bow, which had yet a sort of indolence
in its very ceremony, and then having done this much, he sat down, as if
he was very much at home indeed.

"I thought I would run in on my way to Broome street," he said. "I am
obliged to go to Miss Gower's, though I am tired out to-night."

"Obliged!" echoed her ladyship.

"Well--yes,"