“I do not know that it is true!” she exclaimed. “What right have you to say such a thing, as if you knew Merton so well, and had weighed him in an infallible balance and found him wanting! I have heard nothing but malicious tittle-tattle, a falsehood beneath contempt, set afloat by some enemy of Merton's. If I could have thought it true for one moment I should never cease to despise myself. Have you forgotten how you blazed out against me for speaking my mind about Miss Starbrow when she cast you off? Yet you did not know her as I know Merton, and how paltry a thing is the feeling you have for her compared with that which I have for my future husband! What does it matter to me what they said?--I know him better. But you have been prejudiced against him from the beginning, for no other reason but because I loved him. Nothing but selfishness was at the bottom of that feeling. You imagined that marriage would put an end to our friendship, and thought nothing about my happiness, but only of your own.” “Do you believe that of me, Constance?” said Fan, greatly distressed. “Ah, I remember when we had that trouble about Mary's letter at Eyethorne, you said that you had not known me until that day. You do not know me now if you think that your happiness is nothing to me--if you think that it is less to me than my own.” Her words, her look, the tone of her voice touched Constance to the heart. “Oh, Fan, why then do you provoke me to say harsh things?” and then, turning aside, burst into a passion of weeping and sobs which shook her whole frame. But when the sobs were exhausted she recovered her serenity: those violent remedies--anger and tears--had not failed of their beneficent effect on her mind. On the following day she seemed even cheerful, as if the whole painful matter had been forgotten. Merton, at all events, seemed to detect no change in her when he came to take her to the park in the afternoon. Only to Fan there appeared a shadow in the clear hazel eyes, and a note of trouble in the voice which had not been there before. In a short time after this incident Fan was taken into the great Regent Street establishment, and had her mind very fully occupied with her new duties. One afternoon at the end of her first week the manager came up and spoke to her. “Are you living with friends?” he said. “I am living with Miss Churton--the lady who came here with me,” she replied. “But she is going to be married soon, and I must find another place nearer Regent Street.” “Ah, this then will perhaps be a help to you,” and he handed her a card. “That is the address of a woman who keeps a very quiet respectable lodging-house. We have known her for years, and if she has a vacancy you could not do better than go to her.”