"You know what I mean, Elsie, but the subject is not an easy one for a mother to talk about, especially when a child pretends to misunderstand: I cannot help feeling the danger to you and Katie." Mrs. Manning had no time to add another word. Very inopportunely, as she thought, the door opened, and a servant announced "Miss Chatterton." Perhaps, for the first time in her life, Elsie was glad of the arrival of that loquacious spinster, though by means of an open French window she escaped into the garden, and did not re-appear until dinner-time. The girl was not indifferent or heedless as she listened to her mother; on the contrary, every word was engraven on her memory, and she recognised the love and anxious care which had prompted the little talk. Still, out of all that had been said, the sage advice was the least thought about. The very last words of the interrupted sentence were those which really produced a profound impression, and they were, "The danger to you and Katie." CHAPTER IV. MISS CHATTERTON was duly regaled with five o'clock tea, and having relieved herself of quite a budget of small talk, which she deemed anything but small, went away with the impression that she had never found Mrs. Manning so good a listener. If she had but known how often the mother's mind wandered to the subject uppermost upon it, and how unconscious she was of much that her visitor said, she might not have deemed her comparative silence so complimentary. But most of Miss Chatterton's acquaintances knew that her happiness would be, to a large extent, secured by being permitted to monopolise the greater portion of the conversation; her interest was not confined to young people, but was of an all-embracing character. Some one lately made the remark in my hearing, "It is a great thing when a person learns to recognise his neighbour's right to an independent existence." Miss Chatterton had lived to be sixty years old without doing this, but thought her neighbours, each and all, should recognise her right to put her finger into every social pie in Rathbury and its neighbourhood. Her last words on this occasion had struck painfully on Mrs. Manning's ear. She had been communicating a piece of most interesting intelligence, as she considered it, and was delighted to think that she was the first to do so.