"Not of any more friends, darling, but of one friend. My brother has been here." "Oh!" "Yes; and he is longing to see you." Minola sincerely wished she could say that she was longing to see him. But she could not say it, even to please her friend and comrade. "You don't want to see him," said Mary Blanchet in piteous reproach. "But you do, dear," Miss Grey said; "and I shall like to see any one, be sure, who brightens your life." This was said with full sincerity, although at the very moment the whimsical thought passed through her, "We only want Mr. Augustus Sheppard now to complete our social happiness." CHAPTER VI. IS THIS ALCESTE? Minola's mind was a good deal disturbed by the various little events of the day, the incidents and consequences of her first visit in London. She began to see with much perplexity and disappointment that her life of lonely independence was likely to be compromised. She was not sure that she could much like the Moneys, and yet she felt that they were disposed and determined to be very kind to her. There was something ridiculous and painful in the fact that Mr. Augustus Sheppard's name was thrust upon her almost at the first moment of her crossing for the first time a strange threshold in London; then there was Mary Blanchet's brother turning up; and Mary Blanchet herself was evidently falling off from the high design of lonely independence. Again, there was Mr. Heron, who now knew where she lived, and who often went to the British Museum, and who might cross her path at any hour. Sweet, lonely freedom, happy carelessness of action, farewell! Mr. Heron was especially a trouble to Minola. The kindly, grave expression on his face when he heard of her living alone declared, as nearly as any words could do, that he considered her an object of pity. Was she an object of pity? Was that the light in which any one could look at her superb project of playing at a lifelong holiday? And if people chose to look at it so, what did that matter to her? Are women, then, the slaves of the opinion of people all around them? "They are," Minola said to herself in scorn and melancholy--"they are; we are. I am shaken to the very soul, because a young man, for whose opinion on any other subject I should not care anything, chooses to look at me with pity!"