ent on my
education, and that he himself can't do anything for me. I'd like to go
and take a proper training for something--kindergarten, or horticulture,
or domestic economy. But how can I when there's nothing to do it on? I
suppose it'll end in my going out as a nursery governess."

"Oh, Loveday!"

"Well, what else can I do? I daresay I'd love the children, and be quite
happy in a way, but the worst of it is, it's such a blind alley, and
leads to nothing. It's all very well to be a nursery governess when
you're eighteen, but I'd like to be something better at thirty-six. If
you want to get anything decent in the way of a post you have to train."

Diana, to whom all these ideas were fresh and bewildering, was trying to
adjust her brains to the new problems. She wrenched her mind from the
near present, and took a mental review of Loveday's far future.

"But aren't you going to get married?" was the result of her
cogitations.

Loveday, busy plying her hair-brush, shook her long flaxen mane
dolefully.

"I don't say I wouldn't _like_ to. But I don't think it's at all likely.
I'm not an attractive kind of girl; I know that well enough. I'm so shy.
I never know what to say to people when they begin to talk to me. They
must think me a silly goose. You should see my cousin Dorothy; she's
always the very life and soul of a party. If I were like _that_ now! I
don't suppose anybody'll ever trouble to look at me twice. I'm sure
Auntie thinks so. No; I expect I've just got to make up my mind to be a
nursery governess for the rest of my days."

Diana, still in a state of mental bewilderment, looked at pretty Loveday
sitting on the bed brushing out her silky fair hair, and her memory
switched itself back suddenly to the last evening of their motor trip.
She had been sitting in the lounge of the hotel, and through the open
door could see Giles standing in the hall. Loveday had come running
downstairs. Diana would never forget the look that for an instant
flashed across Giles's face. It contained something that she had not yet
altogether grasped or realized.

"I wouldn't make up my mind too soon if I were you," she said slowly.
"You might change it some day."

Whatever the future might hold in store, the present was the most
immediate concern. Loveday wished to take back a good report to her
uncle and aunt, and studied hard so as to obtain a fair place in the
examination lists. She had just a faint hope that if they thought