She left me then and went to the little bride, who I knew did not enjoy her elaborately served dinner in her handsome parlor one-half as much as I enjoyed my simple tea in my rocking-chair before the fire, which whispered and spit so cheerily and cast such pleasant shadows on the wall. All my poverty and loneliness were for the time forgotten in the glamour of these creature comforts, but they returned to a certain extent when, my supper over and the tea-things removed, I sat down to read the few letters which had come for me within the last two weeks and not been forwarded. Was there one from Tom? I asked myself, and I was conscious of a feeling of disappointment when I found there was not. “Tom does not care for me anymore,” I said, sadly, to myself, as I opened the first letter and read, with a pang, that Mrs. Lambert, on Warwick Crescent, had concluded to employ a governess in the house, and consequently would not need my services as French and music-teacher to her three daughters. This was a great loss to me, and I remember a feeling of cold and almost hunger as I mechanically folded the letter and laid it aside, and as mechanically opened the second, and read that Mrs. Lennox, High street, Kensington, was going abroad for the winter with her daughters, and would not need me until spring, when she should be glad to employ me again if my time was not fully occupied. “Fully occupied,” I said, bitterly. “Small danger of that. I shall starve at this rate,” and in a hopeless, despairing kind of way I opened the third and last letter and read that Lady Fairfax, No.—Grosvenor Square, would like me to call _at once_ if I cared for another scholar, as she might wish to put her little daughter Maude under my instruction. The note was dated more than two weeks back, and the _call at once_ was underscored as if the summons admitted no delay. “Lost that chance too,” I said, as I studied the small, delicate handwriting, and wondered where I had seen it before, or a handwriting like it. I could not tell, but somehow my thoughts went back to that summer afternoon twelve years ago, and the breezy hall, with the doors opened wide, the sweet-scented air, and the tall, lank boy placing the white rose in my hair and bidding me keep it till he came back.