Within a week every debt was paid absolutely and in full. Even the landlord was abundantly satisfied. Jane Mullins lost her look of care, and became cheerful and fat and good-tempered once more. The boarders, who had been merry enough and careless enough all through, suspecting nothing, of course, seemed now to be beside themselves with merriment. The weather was so fine and the house was so pleasant. Jane Mullins quite came out of her shell. She told stories of her early life, and made those boarders who sat near her at dinner quite roar with laughter, and Captain and Mrs. Furlong also came out of their shells, and were most agreeable and kind and chatty; and mother came down to dinner as usual, and sat in the drawing-room as usual, and in the evenings there was music, and I sang my songs and played my pieces and wore my very prettiest dresses, and Albert Fanning looked at me, and looked at me, and Mrs. Fanning nodded approval at me. Mrs. Armstrong, too, became strangely mysterious, wreathing her face in smiles now and then, and now and then looking strangely sour and disappointed, and Marion Armstrong began to flirt with a young German who had arrived. We never did want to have foreigners in the establishment, but he offered to pay a big sum for a certain room, and Jane said it would be the worst policy to leave him out. He satisfied Marion Armstrong too, which was another thing to be considered, for Marion and her mother were the sort of boarders who are always more or less the backbone of a house like ours. They stay on and on; they pay their money weekly. They speak of their aristocratic neighbours, and are mostly advertisements themselves. Now that the German, Herr Tiegel, had come, there was certainly very little chance of Mrs. and Miss Armstrong taking their departure until the end of the season. Jane used to go and have long talks with mother, and spoke about the future, and the extensions we should make, and Albert and his mother too talked about possible extensions. Mrs. Fanning whispered darkly to me that Albert had large ideas now with regard to the boarding-house. "It's wonderful, my love, the interest he takes in it," she said; "I never saw anything like it in the whole course of my life, and for a publisher too! But his idea is no less than this: When the lease of the next house falls in, we take it too, and break open doors, and have the two houses instead of one. He says the two houses will pay, whereas the one don't, and never could. The boarders, poor things! think that they are doing us a splendid good turn, but this house ain't paying, and it never will, my love." To these sort of remarks I never made any answer. I was quite cheerful; I had to be cheerful for mother's sake, and it was only at night I let myself go. Even then I tried hard to sleep well and to shut away the future.