Over the girl's white face there slowly spread a stain of vivid colour; into her eyes crept an odd light. She drew the paper more closely into her hands, reading and re-reading the paragraph, until every word of it was imprinted upon her mind. "Young lady--who needs a home--no fortune necessary," she murmured. "Oh! if only it didn't seem so cold-blooded and horrid, what a way out it might be! Only--it seems--so--so mercenary--and not what I always thought of when I was silly--and dreamt--things," her musings ran on. "Once--I dreamt about a fairy prince--who would--just come--and--make me love him--and he and I would--be--all the world--to each other. But--of course--one couldn't be all the world to a person one had arranged to meet through a newspaper." Another smile broke over her face, and when she smiled, Christina's face was very sweet. "It may be just some dreadful trap to catch a silly girl," she reflected sagely, "and if--if I did really think of answering it, I should have to be very careful what I said--and where I arranged to meet R.M. Of course I--shan't really answer it at all--only--if I did--and if he were nice--and if--it all came right--there wouldn't be any more of this dreadful struggle!" She noted the address of this advertisement amongst the others in her little pocket-book, and then made her way out of the library and trudged homewards through the yellow murk, buttoning her very inadequate coat tightly about her and shiveringly speculating whether, if she really answered R.M.'s advertisement, there might be a chance of obtaining clothing more fitted to resist the penetrating chill of a November fog. Her own small room looked dingier than usual when she entered it, and it was so full of fog and damp, that she rolled a blanket round her before lighting a candle and seating herself at the tiny table, to answer some of the advertisements she had copied. The room was bare of all but the most necessary furniture. A camp bedstead stood against the wall, whose paper was of that indeterminate drabness affected by lodging-house keepers; a deal table occupied the centre of the room, with the common cane-chair on which Christina sat; and a painted chest of drawers nearly blocked up the one tiny window. There was no wash-hand stand; a cracked white basin and a still more cracked jug stood upon the top of the drawers, a looking-glass of ancient and battered appearance hung over the mantelpiece, and an open cupboard in the wall served Christina as sideboard and larder combined. Beside the bed was a narrow strip of much-faded carpet, but of comfort and homeliness the room showed no trace whatever, save in the tiny touches of home the girl had herself striven to impart to it, by hanging on the walls one or two sketches of the Devonshire village she loved, and by putting on the mantelpiece a few treasured photographs. But her best endeavours had failed to make the room other than a most dreary and