"The new girl, Anne Hereford. She brought the things to school in her box." Miss Fenton looked round for me: I was standing quite at the back. I had not courage to contradict the words. But just then a commotion arose from the group which stood round the burnt girl, and Miss Fenton turned to it in her sickening fear. The doctors came, and we were consigned to bed, Georgina Digges being taken into another room. Happily, she was found not to be dangerously burnt, badly on the arm and shoulder, but no further. Of course there was a great trouble in the morning. Mrs. Hemson was sent for and to her I told the truth, which I had not dared to tell to Miss Fenton. The two ladies had afterwards an interview alone, in which I felt sure Mrs. Hemson repeated every word I had spoken. Nothing more was said to me. Miss Fenton made a speech in the school, beginning with a reproach at their taking a young child's money from her, and going on to the enormity of our offence in "sitting up at night to gormandize" (apologizing for the broad word), which she forbad absolutely for the future. Thus the affair ended. Georgina Digges recovered, and joined us in the school-room: and she was not taken away, though we had thought she would be. But, in spite of the accident and Miss Fenton's prohibition, the feasts at night did go on, as often as a new girl came to be made to furnish one, or when the school subscribed a shilling each, and constituted it a joint affair. _One_ little wax taper did duty in future, and that was placed on the mantelpiece, out of harm's way. And that is all I shall have to say of my school-life in England. CHAPTER VIII. EMILY CHANDOS. In the grey dawn of an August morning, I stood on a steamer that was about to clear out from alongside one of the wharves near London Bridge. It was bound for a seaport town in France. Scarcely dawn yet, the night-clouds still hung upon the earth, but light was breaking in the eastern horizon. The passengers were coming on board—not many; it did not appear that the boat would have much of a freight that day. I heard one of the seamen say so; I knew nothing about it; and the scene was as new to me as the world is to a bird, flying for the first time from a cage where it has been hatched and reared. I was fifteen, and had left Miss Fenton's for good; thoroughly well-educated, so far. And now they were sending me to a school in France to finish.