nce, I did not know that you were here when I came down
to-day! I thought that you had gone to your friend Mrs. Bartolet at
Worcester, as you said to me that you would when I saw you last. Why
have you not gone? You said that life here was now intolerable to you. I
remember your very words, although I have not been here for weeks."

"Your memory does you credit," said the girl, with slow scorn.

"Why have you stayed?"

"For my own ends--not yours."

"So I suppose."

"My dear brother Hubert," said Florence, composing herself in a graceful
attitude in the depths of her basket-chair, "can you not be persuaded to
go your own way and leave me to go mine? You have done a good deal of
mischief already, don't you know? You have ruined my prospects,
destroyed my hopes--if I were sentimental, I might say, broken my heart!
Is not that enough for you? For mercy's sake, go your own way
henceforward, and let me do as I please!"

"But what is your way? What do you please?"

"Is it well for me to tell you after the warning I have had?"

"If you had a worthy plan, an honorable ambition, you could easily tell
me. Again I ask, Why are you here?"

"Yes, why?" repeated Florence, her lip curling, and, for the first time,
a slight color flushing her pale cheeks. "Why? Your dull wits will not
even compass that, will they? Well, partly because I am a thoroughly
worldly woman, or rather a woman of the world--because it is not well to
give up a good home, a luxurious life, and a large salary, when they are
to be had for the asking--because as Enid Vane's governess, I can have
as much freedom and as little work as I choose. Is not that answer
enough for you?"

"No," said Hubert doggedly, "it is not."

She shrugged her graceful shoulders.

"It should be, I think. But I will go on. I look three-and-twenty, but
you know as well as I do that I am twenty-nine. In another year I shall
be thirty--horrible thought! An attack of illness, even a little more
trouble, such as this that I have lately undergone, will make me look my
full age. Do you know what that means to a woman?" She pressed her
eyelids and the hollows beneath her eyes with her fingers. "When I look
in the glass, I see already what I shall be when I am forty. I must make
the best of my youth and of my good looks. You spoiled one chance in
life for me; I must make what I can of the other."

"You mean," said the young man, with white dry lips, which he vainly
attempted to moist