‘It was very sweet of you to come all the same, auntie,’ said Lina, kissing her, ‘and we might have wanted you badly. Besides, your advice is going to be taken. It is to please you that I am going to have a new gown—which I really don’t want.’ ‘Be sure Miss Piper makes your waist longer. The last was too short. She is not a patch upon my little Frenchwoman. But you are so bent upon employing the people about you.’ ‘I like to spend my money near home, auntie.’ ‘Even if you are rewarded by being made a guy. Well, at your age, and with your advantages, you can afford to be careless. I can’t.’ New Year’s Day passed very quietly. There was much less fuss about the new year at South Hill than there had been at Madame Tolmache’s twelve months ago; where the young ladies had prepared a stupendous surprise—of which she was perfectly aware a month beforehand—for that lady, in the shape of an embroidered sofa-cushion; and where the pupils presented each other with boxes of sweetmeats, and gushed exceedingly, in sentiments appropriate to the occasion. Except that Daphne found the pearl necklace in a little old-fashioned red morocco case under her pillow when she awoke on that first dawn of the year, the day might have been the same as other days. She sat up in her little curtainless bed, with the necklace in her hand, looking straight before her, into the wintry landscape, into the new year. ‘What is it going to be like for me? What is it going to bring me?’ she asked herself, her eyes slowly filling with tears, her face and attitude, even to the listless hand which loosely held the string of pearls, expressive of a dejection that was akin to despair. ‘What will this new-born year bring me? Not happiness. No, that could not be—that can never be. I lost the hope of that a year and a half ago—on one foolish, never-to-be-forgotten summer day. If I had died before that day—if I had taken the fever like those other girls, and had it badly, and died of it, would it not have been a better fate than to be always fluttering on the edge of happiness; wickedly, wildly happy sometimes when I am with him—wretched when he is away; guilty always—guilty to her, my best and my dearest; shameful to myself; lost to honour; conscience-stricken, miserable?’ Her tears fell thick and fast now, and for some moments she wept passionately, greeting the new year with tears. Then, growing calmer, she lifted the pearls to her lips, and kissed them tenderly.