lsie sighed deeply. Mr.
Graham's name stirred up uncomfortable recollections. In any case,
much as she had admired and liked him, she would have dreaded meeting
him again; and to entertain him alone for an indefinite period, with
his undivided attention focussed upon her, seemed an ordeal not only to
be dreaded but truly to be shunned.

Suppose he should refer again to her darling mother--as he surely
would! Acting or no acting, the girl felt that she couldn't deny her
again. Should she do so, it would be like the Palladium ceasing to
stand and Troy falling. And yet, what was she to do? If she didn't
hold to her statement of the summer, wouldn't she hazard spoiling
everything, not only for herself, but for the Elsie at Enderby?

Too wretched to allow herself the comfort of the window-seat in the
bow, Elsie dropped down on the floor before one of the long, low
windows of the adjacent side of the room, and gazing drearily out into
the dusky street, tried to prepare herself for an impromptu scene with
the coming guest wherein the matter of extraordinary dimples or sticky
babies might come up at any moment and be skilfully parried. But
stage-fright, confusion, and tears threatened imminently, like an ugly
nightmare, and she said to herself there was no use, she simply dared
not face it.

The temptation came to her to avoid the whole encounter by going to bed
at once. She certainly felt queer--almost faint; and when she should
be missed at the dinner-table and some one came up to see what had
happened, she could truly say she didn't feel able to see Mr. Graham,
and send word that he was to wait for Miss Pritchard.

As she considered the suggestion, reaching the point where Cousin Julia
came in, the girl's heart smote her. Cousin Julia would be
startled--yes, frightened. What a wretch she was deliberately to plan
to cause her utterly gratuitous anxiety! And how practised, how
_grounded_, in deceit she had grown, to turn thereto so readily for
help out of difficulty! How very far she was getting from her class
motto, "Per aspera ad astra"! And she recollected a word, strange
hitherto to her, which Cousin Julia had used in the summer. She had
mentioned her hope, as she had looked forward to the coming of the real
Elsie Marley, that she shouldn't have, at sixteen, become _inveterate_
in the ways of the Pritchard family. Well, wasn't she fast becoming
_inveterate_ in the ways of deceit? Wasn't she, perhaps, al