re resolved against
confiding it to me. I only wish to know frankly from your own lips,
whether you have formed a wish to leave this situation. If so, I entreat
you to declare it freely."

"You are very obliging, indeed, madame," said the pretty foreigner,
drily, "but I have no such wish, at least at present."

"Very well, mademoiselle," replied Mrs. Marston, with gentle dignity; "I
regret your want of candor, on your own account. You would, I am sure, be
much happier, were you to deal frankly with me."

"May I now have your permission, madame, to retire to my room?" asked
the French girl, rising, and making a low courtesy--"that is, if madame
has nothing further to censure."

"Certainly, mademoiselle; I have nothing further to say," replied the
elder lady.

The Frenchwoman made another and a deeper courtesy, and withdrew. Mrs.
Marston, however, heard, as she was designed to do, the young lady
tittering and whispering to herself, as she lighted her candle in the
hall. This scene mortified and grieved poor Mrs. Marston inexpressibly.
She was little, if at all, accessible to emotions of anger and certainly,
none such mingled in the feelings with which she regarded Mademoiselle de
Barras. But she had found in this girl a companion, and even a confidante
in her melancholy solitude; she had believed her affectionate,
sympathetic, tender, and the disappointment was as bitter as unimagined.

The annoyances which she was fated to receive from Mademoiselle de Barras
were destined, however, to grow in number and in magnitude. The
Frenchwoman sometimes took a fancy, for some unrevealed purpose, to talk
a good deal to Mrs. Marston, and on such occasions would persist,
notwithstanding that lady's marked reserve and discouragement, in
chatting away, as if she were conscious that her conversation was the
most welcome entertainment possible to her really unwilling auditor. No
one of their interviews did she ever suffer to close without in some way
or other suggesting or insinuating something mysterious and untold to the
prejudice of Mr. Marston. Those vague and intangible hints, the meaning
of which, for an instant legible and terrific, seemed in another moment
to dissolve and disappear, tortured Mrs. Marston like the intrusion of a
specter; and this, along with the portentous change, rather felt than
visible, in mademoiselle's conduct toward her, invested the beautiful
Frenchwoman, in the eyes of her former friend and patroness,