She told William that she was going to leave town and travel with a theatrical company, to gain experience in better parts than she could hope to play in London yet. He walked all the way home with her, and, looking at her gravely as he stood saying the last words to her, he complained that she was thin and pale. “Do you know, Annie, you are so much altered I should hardly have known you. You have lost all your pretty color, and your eyes are not half so bright as they used to be. It is all that beast Harry, making you have to work for your living!” he broke out, passionately. “He deserves to be kicked!” “Come, be reasonable, William; that is not Harry’s fault. Women must expect to ‘go off’ in looks, you know, as they grow older.” “But you are not old. That is nonsense.” “I am two-and-twenty. When you last saw me, I was not nineteen.” “Well, you ought not to have changed so much in less than three years. Never mind,” added he affectionately, seeing that his words seemed to depress his sister-in-law--“I love you just as much as ever; and you will soon get back your color when you get out of London and forget all about Harry again.” And he kissed her and bade her good-bye most unwillingly; for the following morning he had to go back to the Elms, to see George about the expenses of a “coach” to cram him for the examination he would have to go through. Annie went up-stairs to her rooms--she could afford to have a sitting-room now--feeling ashamed of the pain his remarks upon her looks had given her. It was a fact she had known for a long time now, that her beauty had fallen off, so that there were barely traces of it left. A thin, brown face, without a tinge of pink in the cheeks, and with scarcely more than a tinge in the lips, eyes from which the brightness of hope and joy had gone, and a weary, worn expression, were what less than three years of lonely work and disappointment had left of her youthful prettiness. No woman, and especially an actress, can suffer the sense of lost beauty to be suddenly brought home to her without a pang, and Annie’s vanity was strong enough to make her cry at William’s evident regret. “Perhaps Harry himself would not know me,” she thought to herself, “and would be disgusted if I were pointed out to him as his wife.” So she cried herself to sleep.