to herself, ‘How little a difference would have made me like this!’ and then she said, ‘What a bore it would have been!’ The laugh suited her better than the sigh. It called forth a twinkle of mischief and lurking vagabondism in her eyes. She then lay down on Mrs. Swinford’s sofa, put back her head upon the cushions, took up first one book, then another, and read a page or two. Then she threw them down one after another, and looked round the room again. How pretty it was! Her eyes lingered for a moment here and there on the pictures, the little graceful bronzes, the prevailing ornament, the lights, carefully planned to the advantage of the decorations. And then a strange shadow came over her face. Good heavens, to lie here, and remember! she said. Perhaps in her energy of feeling, these words were said aloud. At least, they brought in Julie, who had in the meantime returned to her room, not suspecting the presence of this visitor, and who peeped in suspicious, half-terrified, with her hand on her breast. ‘C’est vous, Madame?’ she said, with a look of mingled terror and relief. ‘Who else should it be, unless a thief?’ said Mrs Brown. ‘But as it might have been a thief and not me, you know, you ought not to be absent, _ma chère_.’ Julie clasped her hands and entreated that Madame would not say anything. ‘This is not the house for thiefs,’ she said. ‘On the contrary, it is just the house. Don’t you know all the robberies of jewels are done when the family are at dinner?’ Mrs. Brown rose from the sofa and took a low chair beside the fire, where she continued to sit when she had dismissed Julie much alarmed by the admonition. Many thoughts went through her mind while she waited, and she had a long time to wait. She compared her own vagabond lot, now up, now down, which she had led after her own wild fancy--the life rather of a man than of a woman--with this beauty and luxury, with a shudder of pity going over her. The pity was not for herself, but for the other woman shut in, in this gilded cage to---- remember! The pictures on the walls, the carefully arranged lights, the unchangeable surroundings, all luxury and brightness, affected her like a spell. Good heavens! to sit there day after day, evening after evening, and remember! Mrs. Brown thought of her own little rooms which it had given her pleasure to arrange and decorate in a manner which she felt to be fictitious and out of character, but which amused her all the same, and which she laughed at, having done it, with a full consciousness that it was trumpery, and that the trumpery was out of place, as a woman who knew better could not fail to see. ‘Ah, well!’ she said to herself, ‘I’d rather have my trumpery that I can throw away any day, and probably shall some day, and that I can run away from when I like, when it gets too absurd.’ And then there were the books: French novels, going over and over with fantastic variations the one story--the story of (so-called) love--that is, the