"Then can't I help you, Miss Bonnibel?" cried Lucy, feeling that the words of her young mistress are too true for her to dispute them. "Something troubles you--can't I help you to be happier?" A sigh--hopeless, passionate, profound--drifts across the lips of the listener. "No no, my poor, kind girl," she answers; "no one can help me--I must bear my own cross--no one can carry it for me! Only stay with me, Lucy, and love me always--I have so few to love me--and I shall feel better when I can see that your kind heart sympathizes with me." "I'll never leave you, my dear mistress," sobs the girl; "I'll never forget to love every hair of your innocent head." She kisses the little hand Bonnibel has given her reverently and tenderly, as if it were some precious thing. "Lucy, I am going to test your fidelity," says the girl, drearily. "I am going away to Europe next week. Will you go with me?" Lucy stares open-mouthed. "To Yurrup, Miss Bonnibel! Away off to them furrin parts?" "Yes, Lucy, away off there. Does your courage fail you?" her mistress inquires, with a slight, sad smile. "No, no, ma'am. I don't like furrin people much; but I'll go to the ends of the earth with you!" is the resolute reply. "Your devotion shall not be taxed that far, Lucy. We will go to France." "That heathen land," exclaims Lucy, "where the monseers eats frogs and snakes?" Bonnibel cannot repress a smile at the girl's quick gesture of disgust. "You will like the French people better, I hope, when you stay among them two years, for I shall probably stay in Paris that long. I am going to school there, Lucy. You know that I have never been to school in my life, and my governesses were not strict enough with me. There are many things I do not know yet, that one moving in society I frequent should know. So I am going to learn something yet. It is never too late to mend, you know." Lucy looks up, her eyes growing round with surprise. "Lor', Miss Bonnibel, I never heard of a married woman going to school in my life." "Perhaps you never heard of a married woman so untutored as I am," her young mistress returns, somewhat bitterly; "anyway, I am determined to go to school and learn something. But I cannot do without a maid, and I will take you, if you will go." "That I certainly will, Miss Bonnibel," said Lucy, emphatically. "Very well, Colonel Carlyle and I will start to New York to-morrow to make preparations for our trip. See that the trunks are all packed, Lucy." "I will, ma'am. They shall be ready, never fear." She rises and looks wistfully at the little white figure in the chair, resting its dimpled chin in the curve of one pink palm, the golden head bent wearily. "Sha'n't I get you something? Indeed, you look ill," she implores. "Nothing, Lucy. Good-night." "Good-night, ma'am," Lucy responds, going away rather reluctantly.