"Oh, nothing! What sort of a girl she was, for instance." "A wild little creature--a horrid, ungrateful, bad-tempered girl! They--we were all glad when she went." "Why, the old woman--what's her name?--Sister Louisa--said that she was a general favorite!" "I'm sure she wasn't. When were you there?" "The day after her departure, I think." "And what took you there, Mr. Lepel?" There was a touch of bewilderment in Cynthia's voice. "Curiosity, for the most part." "No one was at the school whom you knew, I suppose?" "No," said Hubert, reflecting that Jane Wood had gone before he paid his visit. Perhaps Cynthia did not understand this point. At any rate, she looked relieved. "I was glad when my time came to leave," she said more freely. "Did you not like the place?" "Pretty well. It was frightfully, awfully dull!" "And yet you had never known anything more exciting? Were you really conscious at the time that it was dull, or did you realise its dulness only afterwards?" "Oh, I must have had it in my blood to know the difference between dulness and enjoyment," she said lightly; "otherwise----" "Well--otherwise?" "Otherwise," she said smiling at him, "how should I know it now? There is a vast difference between dulness and enjoyment--as vast as that between happiness and misery; and I know them both." "Cynthia," he said, rising and leaning towards her--"Cynthia, child, you do enjoy your present life--you are happy, are you not?" She looked at him silently. The smile faded; he noticed that her bosom rose and fell more quickly than before. "You think I ought to be?" she said. "But why? Because I have been in Italy--because I have had a little success or two--because people say that I am handsome and that I have a voice? That is not my idea of happiness, Mr. Lepel, if it is yours; but you know as well as I do that it is not happiness at all. It is excitement if you like, but nothing else--not even enjoyment." "What would you call enjoyment then, Cynthia? What is your idea of happiness?" Her hurried breathing seemed to have infected him with like shortness of respiration; there was a fire in his eyes. "Oh," she said looking away from him and holding her hands tightly clasped upon her knee, "it is not different from other women's ideas of happiness--it is quite commonplace! It means a safe happy home of my own, with no reasonable fear that distrust or poverty or sin should invade it--congenial work--a companion that I could love and trust and work for and care for----" she stopped short. "A husband," said Hubert slowly, "and children to kiss your lips and call you 'Mother,' and a man's love to soften and sweeten all the days of your life." She nodded, but did not speak. "And I," he said, with an irrepressible sigh--"I want a woman's love--I want a home too, and all the sweet charities of home about me. Yes, that is happiness."