"Good Heavens, Sepia! don't be so heartless!" cried Hesper. "Things are not quite so bad as that! I am not yet in the hell of knowing that. The day is not fixed for the great red dragon to make a meal of me." "I see you were not asleep in church, as I thought, all the time of the sermon, last Sunday," said Sepia. "I did my best, but I could not sleep: every time little Mowbray mentioned the beast, I thought of Mr. Redmain; and it made me too miserable to sleep." "Poor Hesper!--Well! let us hope that, like the beast in the fairy-tale, he will turn out a man after all." "My heart will break," cried Hesper, throwing herself into a chair. "Pity me, Sepia; _you_ love me a little." A slight shadow darkened yet more Sepia's shadowy brow. "Hesper," she said, gravely, "you never told me there was anything of that sort! Who is it?" "Mr. Redmain, of course!--I don't know what you mean, Sepia." "You said your heart was breaking: who is it for?" asked Sepia, almost imperiously, and raising her voice a little. "Sepia!" cried Hesper, in bewilderment. "Why should your heart be breaking, except you loved somebody?" "Because I hate _him_," answered Hesper. "Pooh! is that all?" returned Miss Yolland. "If there were anybody you wanted--then I grant!" "Sepia!" said Hesper, almost entreatingly, "I can not bear to be teased to-day. Do be open with me. You always puzzle me so! I don't understand you a bit better than the first day you came to us. I have got used to you--that is all. Tell me--are you my friend, or are you in league with mamma? I have my doubts. I can't help it, Sepia." She looked in her face pitifully. Miss Yolland looked at her calmly, as if waiting for her to finish. "I thought you would--not help me," Hesper went on, "--that no one can except God--he could strike me dead; but I did think you would feel for me a little. I hate Mr. Redmain, and I loathe myself. If _you_ laugh at me, I shall take poison." "I wouldn't do that," returned Miss Yolland, quite gravely, and as if she had already contemplated the alternative; "--that is, not so long as there was a turn of the game left." "The game!" echoed Hesper. "--Playing for love with the devil!--I wish the game were yours, as you call it!" "Mine I'd make it, if I had it to play," returned Sepia. "I wish I were the other player instead of you, but the man hates me. Some men do.--Come," she went on, "I will be open with you, Hesper; you don't hang for thoughts in England. I will tell you what I would do with a man I hated--that is, if I was compelled to marry him; it would hardly be fair otherwise, and I have a weakness for fair play.--I would give him absolute fair play." The last three words she spoke with a strange expression of mingled scorn and jest, then paused, and seemed to have said all she meant to say. "Go on," sighed Hesper; "you amuse me." Her tone expressed anything but amusement. "What would a woman of your experience do in my place?"