It seemed to assail the very foundations of her life. Was not this her first duty, and if she could not discharge it, what was to become of her? What would be the value of all the rest? She was sitting in the sitting-room in the morning, somewhat disconsolate, pondering these questions. A bright, still morning of midsummer, all the windows open, and shaded by the pretty striped blinds outside, which kept out the obtrusive sunshine, yet showed it brilliant over all the world below; the windows were full of flowers, those city plants always at the fullest perfection, which know no vicissitudes of growth or decay, but fill the luxurious rooms with one continuous bloom, by grace, not of nature, but the gardener. It was the hour when Lucy was supposed to “read.” She had not herself any great eagerness for education; but no woman who respects herself can live in the same house with a young girl nowadays without taking care to provide that she shall “read.” Lucy had need enough, it must be allowed, to improve her mind; but that mind, so far as the purely intellectual qualities were concerned, did not count for very much in her being. To be more or less well-informed does not affect very much, one way or other, the character, though we fear to utter any dogmatism on such a subject. She was reading history, poor child; she had a number of books open before her, a large atlas, and was toiling conscientiously through a number of battles. Into the very midst of these battles, her thoughts of the earlier morning, which were so much more interesting to her, would intrude, and indeed she had paused after the Battle of Lepanto, and was asking herself, not who was Don John of Austria, or what other great personages had figured there, which was what she ought to have done, but whether it could possibly be her fault, and in what other form she could have put it to succeed better, when suddenly, without any warning, a knock came to her door. She sat very bolt upright at once, and thought of Don John before she said “Come in.” Perhaps it was the lady who was so kind as to read with her--perhaps it was Lady Randolph. She said, “Come in,” and with no displeasure at all, but much consolation, closed her book. She was not sorry to part company with Don John.