Still she did not despair, for of his own accord he had accompanied her and her cousin to Europe, whither he had always intended to go, and though he had left them some months before, Mrs. Johnson was willing to leave Paris, where Ada’s beauty attracted much attention from the polite Frenchmen, she would not believe he was at all weary of _her_, but rather, as he had said, that his _business_ required his immediate return to America. Latterly Mrs. Lansing had in a measure espoused her cause, and knowing, as she did, of the recent repairs at Sunny Bank, said by Richard to be for the benefit of his bride, she began again to entertain sanguine hopes of eventually becoming Mrs. Delafield, provided the _governess_ did not, by her foolish tattling, mar her prospects. Such, then, was the state of affairs when I was the burden of Ada’s thoughts, as she sat alone in her room on the first night after her return home. For a time she mused with her face in her hands, then lifting up her head and throwing back the silken tresses, which fell over her brow, she gazed long and earnestly at herself in the opposite mirror. “Yes, I am fading,” she said at last, “and each year my chance for winning him grows less, and if this _Lee girl should_ tell, it would take from me every shadow of hope—but it shall not be. I can prevent her foolish tattling from doing me harm, and I will.” Then the better nature of Ada Montrose whispered to her of the great wrong she was meditating against a poor, defenceless girl, who as yet had never injured her, and for a moment she wavered. “If I only knew she would never tell,” said she; “but she _will_, accidentally if not intentionally. Low-bred people like her are always bold, and as she becomes better acquainted with me, she may possibly say something to me about Herbert in the presence of Mr. Delafield, who will question her, perhaps, and thus learn the whole. So I’ll be prepared. She’s nothing but a poor governess, and _my_ word will be preferred to hers, provided I first give her the character of a deceiver.”