not
be obedient to the harsh voice and the odious common sense of her
Aunt Dosett! But how should she take herself to some workhouse? In
what way could she prove her right to be admitted even then? It
seemed to her that the same decree which had admitted Ayala into the
golden halls of the fairies had doomed her not only to poverty, but
to slavery. There was no escape for her from her aunt and her aunt's
sermons. "Oh, Ayala, my darling,--my own one; oh, Ayala, if you did
but know!" she said to herself. What would Ayala think, how would
Ayala bear it, could she but guess by what a gulf was her heaven
divided from her sister's hell! "I will never tell her," she said to
herself. "I will die, and she shall never know."

As she lay there sobbing all the gilded things of the world were
beautiful in her eyes. Alas, yes, it was true. The magnificence of
the mansion at Queen's Gate, the glories of Glenbogie, the closely
studied comforts of Merle Park, as the place in Sussex was called,
all the carriages and horses, Madame Tonsonville and all the
draperies, the seats at the Albert Hall into which she had been
accustomed to go with as much ease as into her bed-room, the box at
the opera, the pretty furniture, the frequent gems, even the raiment
which would make her pleasing to the eyes of men whom she would like
to please--all these things grew in her eyes and became beautiful.
No. 3, Kingsbury Crescent, was surely, of all places on the earth's
surface, the most ugly. And yet,--yet she had endeavoured to do her
duty. "If it had been the workhouse I could have borne it," she said
to herself; "but not to be the slave of my Aunt Dosett!" Again she
appealed to her sister, "Oh, Ayala, if you did but know it!" Then she
remembered herself, declaring that it might have been worse to Ayala
than even to her. "If one had to bear it, it was better for me," she
said, as she struggled to prepare herself for her uncle's dinner.

CHAPTER III.

LUCY'S TROUBLES.

The evening after the affair with the sheet went off quietly, as did
many days and many evenings. Mrs. Dosett was wise enough to forget
the little violence and to forget also the feeling which had been
displayed. When Lucy first asked for some household needlework, which
she did with a faltering voice and shame-faced remembrance of her
fault, her aunt took it all in good part and gave her a task somewhat
lighter as a beginning than the handling of a sheet. Lucy sat at it
and s