ted Mr. Miller. "What do you mean?"

Kate commenced an explanation, but Fanny started up, saying: "Please, Mrs.
Miller, wait until I am gone."

She then quitted the apartment, and sought her own room, of which Julia
had been sole occupant for more than an hour. On her return from school
this hopeful young lady was pleased to find her sister absent. Seating
herself near the window, with paper and pencil, she began the composition
of that letter, which, as we have said, widened the breach between Dr.
Lacey and Fanny. This unhallowed work cost her a world of pains. Many
times were the lines crossed out and rewritten, before they quite suited
her. The letter was but half completed, when Fanny was heard coming slowly
through the upper hall. Springing up, Julia darted through the window out
upon the balcony, and by the time Fanny reached the room she was seated at
the furthest end of the veranda, busily engaged with her forgery.

When she at last returned to the room, and tried to converse with her
sister, she observed that Fanny shrank from her approach and that she had
been weeping. In a very ironical tone Julia said, "What now is the matter?
I declare, Fan, I believe you are a perfect little simpleton. I wouldn't
be such a cry baby, anyway; and make so much fuss about one
good-for-nothing doctor."

Fanny replied very calmly, and without once taking her eyes from her
sister's face, "If you think I have been crying about Dr. Lacey, you are
mistaken."

"Pray what did you cry for?" said Julia, laughingly. "Did somebody look
sideways at you, or omit to call you by some pet baby name?"

"I cried," said Fanny, "because I feared you had been acting very wickedly
toward me."

In an instant Julia's assurance left her. The bright color forsook her
cheek, which became perfectly white. Fanny noticed the change, and it
confirmed her fears. She did not know that the circumstances to which she
alluded had long since faded from Julia's memory, and that her present
agitation arose from the fear that she might have been detected in her
work of deception, and that, after all, she might be foiled and entangled
in her own meshes. A glance of intense anger flashed from her large black
eye, as she muttered between her closed teeth: "Has the wretch dared to
betray me?"

Fanny supposed she referred to Luce; and her first feeling was to save the
helpless servant girl from Julia's displeasure; so she said, "Do not
condemn Luce; she did not t