“What is it now?” asks the girl, with a resolute banishing to the back of her mind of the intense annoyance and apprehension caused by the odious intrusion of Féodorovna, and sitting down beside her guest with resolute and patient sympathy. “I never look at her letters,” says Mrs. Prince, lowering her voice, which has taken on a tone of eager relief. “You know I do not; but she had left it with her others for the butler to stamp. He had it in his hand; it was at the top. I could not help seeing the address.” “Not _again_? She has not been writing to General ---- _again_?” The expression of tragic repulsion in her young companion’s face seems to get upon Mrs. Prince’s nerves. “How you do jump down one’s throat!” she cries peevishly. “No, of course she has not!” “It was stupid of me to suggest it! To whom, then?” “I really could not help seeing,” continues the elder woman, mollified and apologetic for her own action. “It was no case of prying, but I could not help reading, ‘Surgeon-General Jameson, Army Medical Department, Victoria Street, Westminster.’” There is a pregnant pause. “Surgeon-General Jameson!” repeats Lavinia. “He is Director-General of the R.A.M.C., isn’t he?” The plumed toque that crowns Mrs. Prince’s expensive toupet gives a dejected dip of assent. “Does she know him?” “Not from Adam. But that would never stop her writing to any one; no, nor speaking to them either!” Another pause. “She wants to go out to South Africa as a nurse, I suppose?” Again the tall ostrich feathers wave acquiescence. This time a spoken elucidation follows. “That is it, as far as we--her father and I--can make out.” Lavinia draws a little nearer, and lays her hand upon the arm of her visitor’s chair, while her chin lifts itself, and then falls again in a movement of hopeless pity. “I am very sorry indeed for you both! How does Mr. Prince take it? What does he say?” “You can never get much out of Mr. Prince,” replies his wife, in a tone whose complaint is streaked with admiration for a verbal continence of which she feels herself quite incapable. “But he did say, in his dry way, that he should be sorry to be one of Féo’s patients.” Lavinia smiles, but cautiously; and then, illuminated by a sudden suggestion of valid consolation, speaks. “You may make your mind easy, they will never accept her! She has none of the qualifications.” A slightly soothed expression comes over the visitor’s perturbed features. “It seems an odd thing to say of one’s own child, but I must say that there is no one that I would not rather have about me than Féo when I am at all poorly; and Mr. Prince is just the same.” “Then do not waste time in worrying!” says Lavinia, with bracing cheerfulness; herself encouraged by the success of her mode of reassurance. “She will infallibly get a polite No for her answer, and you will never hear anything more about it.”