But I thought no more of Miss Sloman just then, for I knew that Clara's eyes were upon me, and I could feel the hot blood flushing up in my cheeks and tingling in my forehead; while I knew too--nay, I could feel, that another pair of eyes were upon me, eyes that I had seen in the railway carriage, at the station, in my dreams; and I quite shivered as Miss Sloman led me up to the front of a chair where some one was sitting, and I heard her cracked-bell voice say,-- "The new pupil, Monsieur Achille: Miss Bozerne." I could have bitten my lips with anger for being so startled and taken aback before the dark foreign gentleman of whom I have before spoken. Oh, me! sinner that I am, I cannot tell much about that dreadful afternoon. I have only some recollection of stumbling through a page of Telemaque in a most abominable manner, so badly that I could have cried--I, too, who would not condescend to make use of Mr Moy Thomas as a translator, but read and revelled in "_Les Miserables_" and doated on that Don Juan of a Gilliat in "_Les Travailleurs de Mer_" though I never could quite understand how he could sit still and be drowned, for the water always seems to pop you up so when you're bathing; but, then, perhaps it is different when one is going to drown oneself, and in spite of the horrors which followed I never quite made up my mind to do that. There I was, all through that lesson--I, with my pure French accent and fluent speech, condemned to go on blundering through a page of poor old Telemaque, after having almost worshipped that dear old Dumas, and fallen in love with Bussy, and Chicot, and Athos, and Porthos, and Aramis, and D'Artagnan, and I don't know how many more--but stop; let me see. No, I did not like Porthos of the big baldric, for he was a great booby; but as for Chicot--there, I must consider. I can't help it; I wandered then--I wandered all the time I was at Mrs Blunt's, wandered from duty and everything. But was I not prisoned like a poor dove, and was it not likely that I should beat my breast against the bars in my efforts to escape? Ah, well! I am safe at home once more, writing and revelling in tears--patient, penitent, and at peace; but as I recall that afternoon, it seems one wild vision of burning eyes, till I was walking in the garden with Clara and that stupid Patty Smith. "Don't be afraid to talk," whispered Clara, who saw how _distraite_ I was; "she's only a child, though she is so big." I did not reply, but I recalled her own silence on the previous night. "You won't tell tales, will you, Patty?" said Clara. "No," said Patty, sleepily; "I never do, do I? But I shall, though," with a grin lighting up her fat face--"I shall, though, if you don't do the exercise for me that horrid Frenchman has left. I can't do it, and I sha'n't, and I won't, so now then." And then the great, stupid thing made a grimace like a rude child.