t amused her beyond measure, and Bice,
always encouraged by approbation, went on.

"I expected it every morning. The house is so large. I thought the
season, perhaps, was just beginning, and the people not arrived yet.
Sometimes we go like that too soon. The rooms are cheaper. You can make
your own arrangement."

Lucy looked at her very compassionately. "That is why you pass the
mornings in your own room," she said, "were you never then in a country
house before?"

"I do not know what is a country house. We have been in a great castle
where there was the chase every day. No, that is not what _la chasse_
means in England--to shoot I would say. And then in the evening the
theatre, tableaux, or music. But to be quiet all day and all night too,
that is what I have never seen. We have never known it. It is confusing.
It makes you feel as if all went on without any division; all one day,
all one night."

Bice laughed, but Lucy looked somewhat grave. "This is our natural life
in England," she said; "we like to be quiet; though I have not thought
we were very quiet, we have had people almost every night."

To this Bice made no reply. But at Lucy's next question she stared, not
understanding what it meant. "You go everywhere with the Contessa," she
said; "are you out?"

"Out!" Bice's eyes opened wide. She shook her head. "What is out?" she
said.

"It is when a girl begins to go to parties--when she comes out of her
home, out of the schoolroom, from being just a little girl----"

"Ah, I know! From the Convent," said Bice; "but I never was there."

"And have you always gone to parties--all your life?" asked Lucy, with
wondering eyes.

Bice looked at her, wondering too. "We do not go to parties. What is a
party?" she said. "We go to the rooms--oh yes, and to the great
receptions sometimes, and at hotels. Parties? I don't know what that
means. Of course, I go with the Contessa to the rooms, and to the tables
d'hote. I give her my arm ever since I was tall enough. I carry her fan
and her little things. When she sings I am always ready to play. They
call me the shadow of the Contessa, for I always wear a black frock, and
I never talk except when some one talks to me. It is most amusing how
the English look at me. They say, Miss----? and then stop that I may
tell them my name."

"And don't you?" said Lucy. "Do you know; though it is so strange to say
it, I don't even know your name."

Bice laughed, but she made no attem