"Shall I tell you how I lived before I ever thought of being anybody's companion? Shall I tell you all I learned in a school at Dieppe, in a convent at Paris, amongst the strange people who struggle on for bare existence in the foreign quarter of London? I have sat for a model at half a crown an hour; I have sung in a music-hall at half-a-guinea a night. I suppose it was my own fault that I was born without a home, without a position, without parents, as I sometimes think,--certainly without a conscience and without a heart! Yet I know hundreds who have been twice as bad as I ever was, without half my excuses. Mrs. Lascelles, I have been at war with most of my own sex and the whole of the other ever since the days of short frocks and a skipping-rope. Don't you think I must sometimes long to sit down and rest, to leave off being a she-Arab, if only for half an hour?" "Was that why you went to Blackgrove?" asked the other, wondering, interested, a little frightened, yet also a little fascinated, by her guest. "I was in London with a capital of three pounds seventeen shillings," laughed Miss Ross, "and a personalty of five dresses, two bracelets, and Alfred de Musset's poems half-bound, the morning I answered the advertisement that took me to Blackgrove. Can you believe that when I left it yesterday, I might have stayed, if I had chosen, as mistress of the house, the flower garden, the whole establishment, and wife of the worst--well, _one_ of the worst men I have ever had to do with? For a moment I hesitated--I own I hesitated; though I knew her so little, I could almost have done it for Helen's sake. Mrs. Lascelles, that girl is an angel, and her father is--is--not to use strong language--_quite the reverse_." Mrs. Lascelles was woman enough to defend an absent friend, and the colour rose to her brow while she thought how confidentially they were riding together along the Bragford road not twenty-four hours ago. "I have known Sir Henry some time," she said, drawing herself up, and blushing yet deeper to reflect that the "some time" was but a very few weeks after all; "I cannot believe him what you describe. You ought not to say such things if you have no proof of them."