'You are very good, Mrs. Rollo!' said Annabella, who evidently had some difficulty in commanding herself, and was very unlike her usual statuesque manner. For she was a handsome girl, of the Madonna type, and either by temperament or for policy had long adopted a calm style to match. To-day it was broken up.—'I am very much obliged to you!' she went on. 'I did not know whom to speak to, and I _must_ get somebody to help me. And Josephine used to think so much of you; I thought she would mind you if anybody. I couldn't ask mamma—mamma don't know. O what shall I do?'— And with this most honest cry of despair, poor Annabella broke down. Hazel asked what was the matter? under the wild idea for a moment that Miss Powder had found her heart and then rashly broken it. 'Nobody knows—' the girl began again, trying to get the better of her agitation; 'it has not come out yet; nobody suspects; and I thought—if you could hinder it! If you cannot, there is no one that can. Mamma has no idea. And it would just kill her to know. She thinks it is all right. Poor mamma!—' 'But what am I to hinder?' said Wych Hazel. 'Have you seen Josephine lately?' 'Yes.' 'Didn't she seem like herself?' 'Extremely like herself.' 'So she did when I saw her. And her house,—did you see her house?—it was so nicely arranged and so pretty; and I thought she was so happy—' 'I never thought that,' said Wych Hazel. 'I did. I thought she had got what she wanted; we all thought so. Nobody married this year had a better establishment than Josephine; not one.' 'She got what she married for,' said Hazel; 'but Josephine's "wants" were larger than that.' 'Were they?' said Annabella drearily. 'I didn't know it. I don't see how they could be.' Ironical words rose to Wych Hazel's lips; but she sent them back. Somehow her own height of happiness made her strangely tender and humble even towards such fallacy as this. 'Then you are not troubled about her?' she said enquiringly. 'Troubled!' Annabella echoed. 'Why she has left it all.' 'Left it!'—Wych Hazel sat up straight in her place, facing round. 'Nobody knows yet; but she has left it. Mamma don't know. If I can only keep it from mamma!—' 'Keep it from Mrs. Powder?' Hazel repeated. 'Keep what? Where has she gone? What can you be talking of, Miss Powder?'