“No, my dear,” Miss Sibson answered, noting with satisfaction that Mary was making a meal. “No, their parents have removed them. The Recorder is coming to-morrow, and he is so unpopular on account of this nasty Bill—which is setting everyone on horseback whether they can ride or not—and there is so much talk of trouble when he enters, that all the foolish people have taken fright and removed their children for the week. It’s pure nonsense, my dear,” Miss Sibson continued comfortably. “I’ve seen the windows of the Mansion House broken a score of times at elections, and not another house in the Square a penny the worse! Just an old custom. And so it will be to-morrow. But the noise may disturb her ladyship, and that’s why I wish her elsewhere.” Mary did not answer, and the schoolmistress, noting her spiritless attitude and the dark shadows under her eyes, was confirmed in her notion that here was something beyond grief for the mother whom the girl had scarcely known. And Miss Sibson felt a tug at her own heartstrings. She was well-to-do and well considered in Bristol, and she was not conscious that her life was monotonous. But the gay scrap of romance which Mary’s coming had wrought into the dull patchwork of days, long toned to the note of Mrs. Chapone, was welcome to her. Her little relaxations, her cosy whist-parties, her hot suppers to follow, these she had: but here was something brighter and higher. It stirred a long-forgotten youth, old memories, the ashes of romance. She loved Mary for it. To rouse the girl, she rose from her chair. “Now, my dear,” she said, “you can go to your room, if you will. And in ten minutes we will step next door.” Mary looked at her with grateful eyes. “I am glad now,” she said, “I am glad that she came here.” “Ah!” the schoolmistress answered, pursing up her lips. And she looked at the girl uncertainly. “It’s odd,” she said, “I sometimes think that you are just—Mary Smith.” “I am!” the other answered warmly. “Always Mary Smith to you!” And the old woman took the young one to her arms. A quarter of an hour later Mary came down, and she was Mary Smith in truth. For she had put on the grey Quaker-like dress in which she had followed her trunk from the coach-office six months before. “I thought,” she said, “that I could nurse her better in this than in my new clothes!” But she blushed deeply as she spoke: for if she had this thought she had others also in her mind. She might not often wear that dress, but she would never part with it. Arthur Vaughan’s eyes had worshipped it; his hands had touched it. And in the days to come it would lie, until she died, in some locked coffer, perfumed with lavender, and sweet with the dried rose-leaves of her dead romance. And on one day in the year she would visit it, and bury her face in its soft faded folds, and dream the old dreams.