put Miss Courtenay a
red ribbon, and Miss Drummond also.--My dear girls, you must."

"Not for me, Mrs Charles, if you please," said Flora, very quietly: "I
should prefer, if you will allow it, to remain in this room."

My Aunt Dorothea looked at her, and seemed puzzled what to do with her.

"Miss Keith," said she, "do you wear the red?"

"Certainly not, Madam," replied Annas.

"Well!" said my Aunt Dorothea, shrugging her shoulders, "I suppose we
must say you are Scots girls, and have not learnt English customs.--You
can let it alone for Miss Drummond, Perkins.--But that won't do for you,
Cary; you must have one."

"Aunt Dorothea, I will wear it if you bid me," said I: "but I shall tell
everybody who speaks to me that my red ribbon is a lie."

"Then you had better have none!" cried my Aunt Dorothea, petulantly.
"That would be worse than wearing all white. Cary, I never knew you
were so horribly obstinate."

"I suppose I am older, Aunt, and understand things better now," said I.

"Dear, I wish girls would stay girls!" said my Aunt Dorothea. "Well,
Perkins, let it alone. Just do up that lace a little to the left, that
the white ribbon may not show so much. There, that will do.--Cary, if
your Grandmamma notices this, I must tell her it is all your fault."

Well, down-stairs we went, and found the company beginning to come. My
Aunt Dorothea, I knew, never cares much about anything to last, but I
was in some fear of Grandmamma. (By the way, I find this house is
Grandmamma's, not my Uncle Charles's, as I thought.) There was one lady
there, a Mrs Francis, who was here the other evening when we came, and
she spoke kindly to us, and began to talk with Annas and Flora. I
rather shrank into a corner by the window, for I did not want Grandmamma
to see me. People were chattering away on all sides of me; and very
droll it was to listen first to one and then to another.

I was amusing myself in this way, and laughing to myself under a grave
face, when all at once I heard three words from the next window. Who
said "By no means!" in that soft velvet voice, through which ran a
ripple of silvery laughter? I should have known that voice in the
desert of Arabia. And the next moment she moved away from the window,
and I saw her face.

We stood fronting each other, Cecilia and I. That she knew me as well
as I knew her, I could not doubt for an instant. For one moment she
hesitated whether to speak to me, and I took a