But though Mona spoke with apparent certainty, she felt rather uneasy. Lucy's letters had been few and unsatisfactory of late; and her manner, when she met her old friend at the station, had been more unsatisfactory still. "I can't force her confidence," Mona thought, when Miss Lascelles was gone; "but I hope she will tell me what is the matter. Poor little soul!" It was pretty late in the evening when Lucy arrived, pale and tired. "I have kept you waiting for dinner," she said; "I am so sorry. A fractured skull came in just as I was leaving, and I waited to see them trephine. They don't think it will be successful, and--it made me rather faint. But it's an awfully neat operation." Mona went to the table and poured out a glass of wine. "Drink that," she said, "and then come to my bedroom and have a good splash. I will do all the talking during dinner; and when you are quite rested, you shall tell me the news." "Life will be a different thing, now you are back," Lucy said, as they seated themselves at the table. "What lovely flowers!" "You ought to admire them. Aunt Maud sent them from your beloved Cannes. I do so admire that Frisia. It is white and virginal, like Doris." The last remark was added hastily, for at the mention of Cannes, Lucy had blushed violently and incomprehensibly. "I was at the School to-day," Mona went on. "Were you really? It must have been horrid going back." "It was very horrid to find the organic solutions in the chemical laboratory at such a low ebb. But I suppose they will be filled up again for the summer term." "Oh, you know all those stupid old tests!" "It is precisely the part of the examination that I am most afraid of. I have not your luck--or power of divination. Why don't they ask us to find whether a hydroxyl group is present in a solution, or something of that kind?" "Thank heaven, they don't!" "I wonder what a scientific chemist would say, if he were asked to identify two organic mixtures in an hour and a half!" "I did it in half an hour." "Yes, but how? By tasting, and guessing, and adding I in KI, or perchloride of iron." Lucy helped herself to more potato. "I seem to have heard these sentiments before," she said. Mona laughed. "Yes; and you are in a fair way to hear them pretty frequently again, unless you keep out of my way for the next four months." "Did you go into the dissecting-room?" "Yes; and what do you think I found them dissecting?" "Anything new?" "Quite, I hope, in that connection--my unworthy self," and Mona told the story of her little adventure. "Well, really," said Lucy indignantly, "those juniors want a good setting down. I never heard such a piece of bare-faced impudence in my life. What on earth do they know about you, except that you are one of the best students in the School?"