“Marion,” said Cissy excitedly, “you are joking. You don’t mean that you have really done such a mad, unheard-of thing. You, Marion Vere, a daily governess! You Uncle Vere’s daughter! No, nonsense, you can’t be in earnest.” “Yes, Cissy, I am, thoroughly and entirely in earnest. It came into my mind yesterday, when Lady Severn mistook me for Charlie’s governess. I saw before me a simple, easy way of making the money I required to pay back poor Harry’s debt, and I determined to carry out my scheme without telling you of it till it was done.” And then she gave her cousin a full account of her interview with Lady Severn, and the arrangements proposed; and without giving Cissy time to make any remarks, or to urge any objections, she went on to show her how easily and naturally the thing might be managed without anyone’s ever being in their secret. How Lady Severn’s mistaking her name, and the fact of her being a perfect stranger in Altes, would effectually prevent her identity with the daughter of the well-known Mr. Vere ever being suspected. “And after all,” she continued, “it is such a very thrilling thing. I shall only be away for a few hours in the morning, and often indeed shall be home almost before you are dressed. The work itself, such as it is, will be exceedingly good for me in every way. I am really looking forward to it with the greatest pleasure.” “It is not that part of it I am thinking of so much,” said Cissy gravely, “it is the disadvantage it may be to you in a hundred indirect ways, which you are too childish to think of. Even supposing, as may be the case, that the truth is never suspected, there is something very anomalous and undesirable about the whole affair. Especially the being known under a name that is not yours. Fancy, in after life, if it came out in the queer way that things do, that you had spent six mouths abroad under an assumed name! You must own, Marion, that it is enough to startle me to think of what you may be exposing yourself to; and to think it is all for the sake of that wretched money! As if I would not twenty times rather have lent you six times as much, whether you ever repaid it or not.”