“Yes, yes, look at me!” she cried. “I ain’t ashamed of my face to-day. Indeed I quite love it. Oh, I’ve just been writing to all the dear old people at home, my blessed old nurse and Mrs. Comfit--that’s our good housekeeper--to tell them--to tell them my great news! Oh, Pamela, I wanted to tell it by degrees and surprise you, but I can’t. ’Twill out! It is me he wants.” “Mr. W.?” “My own dear, darling Edward Walsingham, who else? Oh, was there ever such a lucky girl? Oh, Pamela! Here, sit beside me. Let me hold your hand. Let me hold your hand, your warm, dear hand that lifted me up, when I was oh, in such a pit of despond.” The two sat together on the maiden’s bed, and Pamela began to cry, as women will, over the tender emotions of the moment. “I’m as glad, my dear,” she said, “as glad as if you’d given me a hundred thousand pounds. Gladder! And, how did it come to pass?” she drew her sucking breath of delighted anticipation. “This morning, then--oh, when I think it was only this morning!--sister being quite unswollen and looking lovelier than ever, Mamma put her into the blue muslin--your blue muslin, you remember it?--and made Meeking do her hair in a new way with a black ribbon bow at the back and little curls, like the Duchess of Devonshire, and oh, sister did look lovely! And just as she was ready, up comes Joe Footman to say the Duchess of Queensberry and Mr. Walsingham was in the withdrawing-room. And Mamma takes sister by the hand and ‘Come, child,’ says she. ‘And if you poke when you come into the room I’ll slap you,’ (Sister does poke sometimes you know.) And off they go, without so much as a look at me. I’d been helping to dress sister, you see, holding the hairpins and that. And there was I in my old frumpy gown, and I just looked at myself in the glass and I thought: ‘You plain thing, how dare you be jealous of beauty, and your own sister, too! And if you cry, you silly creature, you’ll only make yourself plainer, so what’s the good of that!’ And I wouldn’t cry, dear. I picked up sister’s clothes and was putting them away, trying not to think. Oh, trying so hard not to think--of him downstairs, looking worship at Jane, when all at once up comes Joe Footman again. ‘And you’re to come down, Miss, you’re to come down this minute to the withdrawing-room. Her Ladyship has sent for you,’ And oh, you’ll never believe the dreadful thought that came into my head and how near I was saying I would not obey Mamma, for to tell you the truth, I thought she wanted to show off Jane with my plainness. But then I thought, ‘Nay, daughters must do as they’re bid,’ and I set my teeth and down I went, just as I was. Oh, Pamela, such an untidy, ill-dressed poor girl, with a sad pale face! And oh--I can hardly believe it myself--the moment I came into the room up he jumped--yes, he, Mr. W.--and I heard him cry out quite joyful: ‘Ah, I knew I could not be mistaken. Ah, ’tis she, ’tis she indeed!’ And then he took both