ng and irritable. When on the third day Maisie
broke into tears under the constant flood of nagging, the old lady told
her to go away and not to come back till she could control her temper.

"I'll come back when you send for me, and not before, you hateful old
thing!" said Maisie to herself.

And she sat down in her fireless bedroom and wrote a long letter to her
mother, saying how happy she felt, and how kind every one was, and what
a lovely and altogether desirable place was Yalding Towers. Who shall
say whether pride or love, or both, dictated that letter?

When her employer did send for her, it was to tell her, very sharply,
that one more such exhibition of sullenness would cost her her
situation. So she had to learn to school herself. And she did it. But
the learning was hard, very hard, and in the learning she grew thinner,
and some of the pretty pink in her cheeks faded away.

Lady Yalding, when she swept in, in beautiful dream-dresses, always
spoke to the companion quite kindly and nicely and pleasantly, but there
were none of those invitations to come into the drawing-room after
dinner which the _Family Herald_ had led her to expect. Lady Yalding was
always charming to every one, and Maisie tortured herself with the
thought that it was only because she had no opportunity to explain
herself that Lady Yalding failed to see how very much out of the common
she was. She read Ruskin industriously, and once she left her own book
of Browning selections that Edward had given her in the conservatory.
She imagined Lady Yalding returning it to her with, "So, are you fond
of poetry?" or, "It's delightful to find that you are a lover of
Browning!" But the book was brought back to her by a footman, and the
old lady lectured her for leaving her rubbish littering about.

But towards Christmas a change came. Maisie had hoped--more intensely
than she had ever in her life hoped for anything--for a few days' grace,
for a sight of her mother, and the mahogany, and the damask curtains,
and--yes--of Edward. But the old lady, who really was exceptionally
horrid, wondered how she could ask for a holiday when she had only been
in her situation six weeks.

Then the old lady went off at half an hour's notice to spend Christmas
with her other daughter--Maisie would have suspected a "row" if Lady
Yalding had been a shade less charming--and the girl was left. Thus it
happened that Lord Yalding's brother lounged into Lady Yalding's room