“She had a lover whose visits I permitted,” answered Lucy bravely, fully aware that after this she would receive no more flattery, but only censure. “And she changed him for another without one week’s intermission, and without one word of explanation to me. Then when she felt I would remonstrate, she gave me notice, and has taken service with my opposite neighbours.” Florence laughed elfishly. “Poor Lucy!” she cried. “When will you learn sense? The only way to do is to forbid all visitors whatever, as I do.” “Very Draconian and very unfair that seems to me,” said Lucy, “and apt, like all Draconian laws, to be ignored.” “Of course it is,” answered Florence. “And I know how it is done. Our gates, back and front, are heavy, and we can hear them open or shut. But our next-door neighbour—the other side from the Jinxsons—is a doctor, and he leaves his gates open, that a night call may be readily and noiselessly attended to at his hall door. Consequently, my girls’ ‘young men’ come through his gate at night-fall, and leap over the low railing between our gardens. They depart in the same way.” “Then of what service is your rule?” asked Lucy. “It saves us from all responsibility,” Florence answered. “Whoever is in the house, or whatever happens, it is all absolutely against our strict orders, and the girls have no excuse to fall back upon. Of course, we know—and they know—that we cannot enforce our rule, seeing that Jem and I go out so much of an evening.” “Well, I think it is all very unfair and demoralising,” said Lucy. “A respectable girl who wishes to obey you is reduced to solitude, and her decent friends and connexions are kept away, while any hussy who does not care a whit for your regulations is able to enjoy herself to her heart’s content. It is precisely the young men who are prepared ‘to leap over walls’ whom I would wish to keep out of my house!” “Well, ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating,’” returned Florence. “And now that you have lost your paragon, and are reduced to the rank and file of domestic servants, you do not seem to get on much better than the rest of us. What sort of person have you got now?” “A middle-aged woman—as I told you, a Highland woman. She was recommended to me by Mrs. Bray’s Rachel,” said Lucy. “She ought to be another paragon, then,” remarked Florence; “for Rachel is a model. It needs to be a saint to live with Mrs. Bray, who keeps her maid ‘going’ from morning to night. And evidently you start with implicit trust in your Highland woman, as you have so promptly trusted Hugh to her society, in defiance of all your stoutly defended principles.” “I think I might trust him with her,” Lucy answered mildly. “Nevertheless I should not have done so yet. I have Miss Latimer staying with me, and Hugh is left in the company of young Tom Black. Don’t you remember the nice lad Charlie was so interested in, and who was one of my visitors on that awful Christmas Day? He has come to board with us.”