Lady Yalding, when she swept in, in beautiful dream-dresses, always spoke to the companion quite kindly and nicely and pleasantly, but there were none of those invitations to come into the drawing-room after dinner which the _Family Herald_ had led her to expect. Lady Yalding was always charming to every one, and Maisie tortured herself with the thought that it was only because she had no opportunity to explain herself that Lady Yalding failed to see how very much out of the common she was. She read Ruskin industriously, and once she left her own book of Browning selections that Edward had given her in the conservatory. She imagined Lady Yalding returning it to her with, "So, are you fond of poetry?" or, "It's delightful to find that you are a lover of Browning!" But the book was brought back to her by a footman, and the old lady lectured her for leaving her rubbish littering about. But towards Christmas a change came. Maisie had hoped--more intensely than she had ever in her life hoped for anything--for a few days' grace, for a sight of her mother, and the mahogany, and the damask curtains, and--yes--of Edward. But the old lady, who really was exceptionally horrid, wondered how she could ask for a holiday when she had only been in her situation six weeks. Then the old lady went off at half an hour's notice to spend Christmas with her other daughter--Maisie would have suspected a "row" if Lady Yalding had been a shade less charming--and the girl was left. Thus it happened that Lord Yalding's brother lounged into Lady Yalding's room one day, and said: "Who's the piteous black mouse you've tamed?" "I beg your pardon, Jim?" said Lady Yalding. "The crushed apple-blossom in a black frock--one meets her about the corridors. Gloomy sight. Chestnut hair. Princess-in-exile sort of look." "Oh, _that_! It's mother's companion." "Poor little devil!" said the Honourable James. "What does she do now the cat's away? I beg your pardon--my mind was running on mice." "Do? I don't know," said Lady Yalding a little guiltily. "She's a good, quiet little thing--literary tastes, reads Browning, and all that sort of rot. She's all right." "Why don't you give her a show? She'd take the shine out of some of the girls here if you had her dressed." "My dear Jim," Lady Yalding said, "she's all right as she is. What's the good of turning the child's head and giving her notions out of her proper station?" "If I were that child I'd like to have a little bit of a fling just for once. The poor little rat looks starved, as though it hadn't laughed for a year. Then it's Christmas--peace and goodwill, and all that, don't you know. If I were you I'd ask her down a bit----" Lady Yalding thought--a thing she rarely did. "Well," she said, "it _is_ pretty slow for her, I suppose. I'll send her home to her people." "On Christmas Eve? Fog and frost, and the trains all anyhow? Fanny, Fanny!"