Una was silent. Changed in a sense she was, for two years before she would have sobbed herself into hysterics, if half the same weight of emotion had been stirring in her breast. Now she lay still, enduring a knowledge of herself that never ought to have come to her seventeen years. The anguish that had come upon her might be shame and loathing, but it filled her soul. The face might be hateful that had once been adorable, but it blotted every other out. She had thought herself possessed by a new spirit, a holy spirit of love and peace, and behold the old possession had driven the new one away. There was a Face to which she had learned to turn, a Love she was beginning to know, and now--and _now_. She pressed her hand on her heart, and was silent. Instinctively she felt that even Amethyst would not understand. With an effort to turn to a trouble that could be spoken of, she said-- "And Sylvester Riddell--I am ashamed to see him." "Sylvester Riddell knows nothing about you, darling," said Amethyst. "Amethyst, does seeing him make you--feel?" "Oh, I don't mean to feel," returned Amethyst, lightly, "I have a great deal too much to do; let bygones be bygones. Now then, don't let us make mountains of molehills. Here is all your hair tumbling down, I'll do it up prettily. If you had any consideration for the small amount of lady's-maiding we ever get, you wouldn't grow such a quantity." "My ridiculous hair," said Una, pulling it through her fingers, and lingering a little on the epithet. Then, with a hot blush she rose. "Yes, it tires me dreadfully to do it myself." A deficiency of personal attendance was one of the forms of "simplicity" with which the Miss Haredales had to put up, and both Amethyst and Kattern spent most of their leisure in "fixing"--to use a convenient Americanism--their own and their sisters' costumes. A constant attention to frills does not leave much time for feelings, but it was of set purpose that Amethyst absorbed herself in the present. "You know, dear," she said, as she divided and twisted the long heavy lengths of Una's hair, "it is absurd to think that all one's cargo must be in one ship. No one thing is enough, and there's always something more. For instance, one can't think only of society, and of looking well. That's one thing. It's a good big thing, but there are so many others. Now last night I should have liked to have looked at all those pictures, and talked about them to some one that understood. If I go to a concert, I feel as if there was enough in music to fill up one's life. I want to have something of it all. There's no end to the possibilities of everything. I could talk to that queer Mr Carisbrooke for hours!" "I wonder what Sir Richard would say if you told him that," said Una, rather dryly.