aimed pettishly. "I suppose I
can do as I like when Miss Pinwell isn't looking."

"My dear, you generally do that when she _is_. I never saw such
favouritism. I declare it's not fair. You were terribly tormenting all
day. Anybody but you would have been sent to bed and kept on bread and
water. What's the matter with you, miss?"

"Nothing. I'm tired, that's all."

"First time in your life then. You were lively enough this afternoon
when you nearly got me into a scrape trying to make me laugh with your
tickling. It was as much as I could do to keep from screaming,"
exclaimed Priscilla angrily.

"Well, you can do your screaming now if it pleases you, so long as it
doesn't bring Miss Pinwell upstairs. Let me alone. I'm thinking about
something."

"Some _one_, my dear, you mean," put in a tall fair girl, Grace Armitage
by name. "Confess now, isn't it the new curate at St. George's? He
seemed to have no eyes for any one but you last Sunday evening. How
cruel to disturb the poor man's thoughts."

"Console yourself, Grace dear--_you're_ never likely to do that."

The girls tittered at Lavinia's repartee. All knew that Grace Armitage
was the vainest of the vain and believed every man who cast his eyes in
her direction was in love with her. She went white with anger. But she
was slow witted. She had no sarcastic rejoinder ready and if she had it
was doubtful if she would have uttered it. Lavinia Fenton, the soul of
sweetness and amiability, could show resolute fight when roused. Miss
Armitage turned away with a disdainful toss of her head.

The others knew this too, for they ceased to irritate Lavinia and
continued their talk among themselves. All the same, the principal
topic was Lavinia Fenton. She was so strangely unlike herself to-night.

Half an hour later the room was in silence save for the whispering
between the occupants of those beds sufficiently close to each other to
permit this luxury. When the neighbouring clock of St. George's,
Bloomsbury, chimed half-past nine even these subdued sounds had ceased.

At half-past ten the moon was at the full. The pale light streamed
through the small window panes and threw the shadows of the broad
framework lattice-wise on Lavinia's bed which was next the window. In
daylight she had but to lie on her right side and she could see across
the fields and the rising ground each side of the Fleet river to the
villages of Islington and Hornsey.

Gradually the latticed shadow c