It looked dreary enough, for Josephine Charteris's hiding-place. Respectable it was, to be sure. There was a gay ingrain carpet, a little table set out with photographs of Mrs. Rhodes's friends and relations, living and dead; around the walls hung a great number of other pictures in cut walnut frames and resting on brackets of the same. A large one of Abraham Lincoln held the first place among these, and another engraving of a racehorse challenged attention, with a large map of North America and the portrait of Jenny Lind. Hazel felt as if she could not have borne the whole together for one half hour, if she had been there on her own account. In a few minutes Josephine came in. She was not different from what Hazel had been accustomed to see her; not excited, not disturbed. Her dress was rich, and a little careless; in both respects not unlike Josephine. She received her visiter cordially enough. 'You are the only person I would see,' she said. 'How did you know where I was? I have come here for rest. You know there _is_ no rest as long as people know you are in town; it is nothing but go, go, night and day. And here one has really a breath of country air. I have brought a carriage load of books with me—all the new novels I could find; and I just lie abed and read all day. Dreadfully useless, isn't it?' she went on, with a laugh; 'but you know I never pretended to be anything else. Don't you think that is the great point? not to pretend to be what you are not?' 'Well, why do you then?' said Wych Hazel. 'I?—I don't. I think it's no use. People see through pretences. I only pretend enough just to keep up appearances. Didn't I always tell you exactly what I thought? I don't tell everybody.' 'Do you suppose I believe that you came here for the express purpose of being snowed up,—outside of theatres and Germans, and other necessaries of life?' 'That is just what I want,' said Josephine. 'I wish it would snow— five feet deep. I would like nothing better than to be snowed up. I would like to be desiccated—like a man I was reading of yesterday; he's in a French novel. Do you know, he was _desiccated;_ he was a convict, you see, and the men of science could try their experiments upon him; and they desiccated him and laid him by; and he was forgotten, and years passed, and everything changed in the world, and his children grew up, and his friends died—if he had any friends; and people forgot what this preparation was; and they cut off a bit of his ear to try under the microscope whether it was an animal's skin or what it was. And afterwards the skin was put in water and he came to life again— that was all he wanted, you know, like a rose of Jericho. I wish I could be desiccated and kept awhile, till everybody was dead that I know, and then come to life again.' 'What would be the pleasure of that?' said Hazel, watching her.