stops, even when it is only a story in a book, and there are no more accidents and adventures to anticipate, it leaves a dulness behind. And Claire felt a dulness. The story of Charles Wargrave stopped. She did not want it to go on--oh! far from that, she said quickly, with a hot blush; but it left a dulness--as much as that a woman might allow. The season was just about coming to an end, and Mrs Leicester Wargrave's engagements were many in the rush of the final gaieties. She had gone out one afternoon, taking the little girls with her, to a garden-party, a thing which did not happen often, but when it did come was a holiday to Mademoiselle. It was the beginning of July, still and warm, and Claire went out with her work to the garden, to a shady corner in which she could be quiet and undisturbed. She had no fear of any interruption: a visitor for herself was the rarest possible occurrence (for people naturally do not like the governess's visitors about, who might be mistaken for visitors of the house), and none of Mrs Wargrave's visitors were likely to penetrate to the garden, the mistress of the house being absent. Claire had brought out her mending, which was her chief work in her brief moments of solitude. It was in a trim little covered basket, not to offend anybody's eye; and, as a matter of fact, she did more thinking than sewing. The happiness of thinking is when you think about nothing in particular, thinking without an object: and the sense of unusual leisure and quiet, and the soft influences of the air outdoors--which she could enjoy without any anxiety as to Edith exposing herself to the sun, or Dorothy running too fast--had filled Claire's mind with this soft atmosphere of musing without definite thoughts. Stray fancies went flitting through her mind like the little white clouds upon the sky. She was Claire de Castel-Sombre through and through, she was not Mademoiselle at all. She had forgotten to remember about Charles Wargrave, and the story which had come to a pause. For once in a way to have got rid of all that, and then to lift your eyes quickly at the sound of a step on the gravel, and to see him, walking out quietly from under the shadow of the trees! Her heart gave a leap as if it had somehow got loose, but she rose to meet him with a countenance which was no longer that of Claire de Castel-Sombre, but the well-trained face of Mademoiselle. "I am sorry," she said, "Mrs Wargrave and the children are gone out. There is a garden-party at the Merewethers'." "I know," he said, "and hoped to find you alone." "They were kind enough to ask me too," said Mademoiselle. "I am very glad you did not go; I have been watching for this opportunity so long! I suppose you don't think what it is to see you across the table, and never have a chance of a word?" "Monsieur Wargrave," said Mademoiselle, "might avoid that by coming--to dinner, for example, when I am not there."