As she spoke her eye fell on a calling-card lying on the table. It was that of Lady Severn, which, Thérèse being rather untaught in such matters, had followed instead of preceding her into the room. Marion took it up and looked at it closely. In the corner was written the temporary address: “Rue des Lauriers, No. 5.” A trifle, but it decided a good deal. “Now that I know the address,” thought the girl, “I can go there in the morning before Cissy is up.” CHAPTER IV. A FRIEND IN NEED “Sweet fickle Love, you grow for some, And grip them to their grief, As sudden as the redwings come At the full fall of the leaf. “And sudden as the swallows go, That muster for the sea, You pass away before we know, And wounded hearts are we.” W. P. L. “Rue des Lauriers, No. 5:” last thought in her head at night, first when she woke in the morning. In her dreams too the words had been constantly before her: “No fear of my forgetting the address,” said Marion to herself. Breakfast over, she arranged with Thérèse and Charlie, to accompany them in their morning walk about twelve o’clock. And then she fidgeted about, unable to settle to anything; rather frightened, if the truth must be told, at the thought of what she was about to do. It is a crisis in our lives, when, for the first time, we take what we believe to be an important step, entirely on our own responsibility. Well for us when this crisis does not occur too soon. Well too, when it is not deferred too late. Of the two extremes, doubtless the latter is the more to be dreaded. Better some sad tumbles and bruises; better indeed a broken limb, than the hopeless feebleness of members, stunted, if not paralysed for want of natural use. Experience is truly a hard schoolmaster, but we have not yet found a better one. Some day we must be self-reliant, or else be utterly wrecked and stranded. So, if for no higher motive than mere prudence and expediency, it is well not to delay too long the testing of our own powers, the trial of our individual strength. Cissy had said truly that Marion was a curious mixture of simplicity and wisdom, child and woman. I wonder if in this lay her peculiar charm? But this, indeed, I cannot tell. The charm I have felt, deeply too, but like other sweet and beautiful things, I endeavoured in vain to analyse or define it.