She dressed herself with great care. Her prettiest morning gown she donned, and going into the garden plucked a last Marechal Niel rose and placed it against her soft cheek, that was tinted as delicate as itself. And then came breakfast. And with a defiant air, but with some inward shrinking she took her place behind the urn, and prepared to pour out tea for the man who yesterday was her affianced husband, but who for the future must be less than nothing to her. But as fate ordains it she is not called upon to administer bohea to Roger this morning. Mr. Dare does not put in appearance, and breakfast is got through--without, indeed, an outbreak of any sort, but in a dismal fashion that bespeaks breakers ahead, and suggests hidden but terrible possibilities in the future. Dulce is decidedly cross; a sense of depression is weighing her down, a miserable state of melancholy that renders her unjust in her estimate of all those around her. She tells herself she hates Roger; and then again that she hates Stephen, too; and then the poor child's eyes fill with tears born of a heartache and difficult of repression; to analyze them she knows instinctively would be madness, so she blinks them bravely back again to their native land, and having so got rid of them, gives herself up to impotent and foolish rage, and rails inwardly against the world and things generally. Even to Portia she is impatient, and Julia she has annihilated twice. The latter has been lamenting all the morning over a milliner's bill that in length and heaviness has far exceeded her anticipations. But this is nothing; Julia is always so lamenting, and indeed, I never yet saw the milliner's bill, however honest, that wasn't considered a downright swindle, and three times as exorbitant as it ought to be! "Now look at this, my dear Dulce," says the unobservant Julia, holding out a strip of paper about half a yard in length to Miss Blount, who has been ominously silent for the past hour. "I assure you the trimmings on that dress _never_ came to that. They were meagre to the last degree; just a little _suspicion_ of lace, and a touch of velvet here and there. It is absurd--it is a fraud. Did _your_ trimmings ever come to that?" "Don't know, I'm sure," says Dulce, impatiently; "I never keep any accounts of my own money. I make a _point_ of not doing that. If it's spent, it's spent, you know, and one gains nothing by thinking of it. It only shows one how extravagant one has been, and I do so _hate_ scolding myself!" "But, my dear child, Madame Grande _must_ have made a mistake. It is all nonsense; if you would just look it over, if only to convince yourself. I am not unreasonable." "I won't look it over," says Miss Blount, promptly. "I _hate_ looking over things, and I hate bills, and I hate Madame Grande, and I hate--everything."