ch she seemed to have
passed the journey. Then she sat up suddenly, with a curiously
wide-awake and resolute air, and addressed herself to her maid.

"I shall not require you at all to-day, Parker. I brought you only
because the General would never have allowed me to come alone; but I
dislike being attended by any one when I go to the dentist's or to the
doctor's. You may wait at the railway-station until I come back. I may
be only an hour, or I may be gone all day."

"The General's orders, ma'am," began Parker, with a gasp; but her
mistress cut the sentence short at once.

"I suppose you understand that you are my servant and not the
General's?" she said. "You will obey my orders, if you please."

She gave the maid some money, and instructions to spend as much as she
pleased at buffet and book-stalls until her return.

"Enjoy yourself as much as you like and as much as you can," said Mrs.
Vane carelessly--"only don't stir from the station, for when I come back
I shall want you at once."

She installed the faithful Parker safely in the waiting-room, and then
went out and got into a cab--not a hansom cab; Mrs. Vane did not wish to
be seen in her drive through the London streets. The address which she
gave to the cabman was not that of her dentist, but of the lodgings at
present tenanted by her brother.

Parker remained at the station in a state of tearful collapse. She was
terribly afraid of being questioned and stormed at by the General when
she got back for neglect of her trust. She was certainly what Flossy had
called her--"a faithful fool." She wanted to do all that her mistress
required; but it had not as yet even occurred to her that Mrs. Vane was
quite certain to require utter silence, towards the General and
everybody else, on the question of her disposition of the day. And, if
silence was impossible, a good bold lie would do as well. Parker had not
yet grasped the full amount of devotion that was expected of her.

Hubert had seldom been more surprised in his life than when the
elegantly-dressed lady who was ushered into his sitting-room proved to
be his sister Florence. She had never visited him before. He sprang up
from his writing-table, which was piled high with books and manuscripts,
flung a half-smoked cigar into the grate, and greeted her with a mixture
of doubt and astonishment, which amused if it did not flatter the astute
Mrs. Vane.

"This is indeed an unexpected pleasure! I hope you are not t