“Ah, I thought so, from the careless way in which you were going to slip it into your pocket when we caught you in the conservatory. Why, my dear child, I have a set that I value very much--no finer than yours, though--diamonds and cat’s-eyes--and I sleep with them under my pillow, and even my maid doesn’t know where they are.” I showed my astonishment. “Believe me, when you travel about on a series of visits, as I am doing now, and are obliged to entrust your dressing-case to a careless maid, it is no unnecessary precaution.” “But I shouldn’t take so much trouble with my paste pendant,” said I. She shook her head at me, with a laugh, and said dryly-- “I should with such paste as yours.” And then the gentlemen came in. One of them had brought from town that day a parcel of new waltzes, but the ladies all declined to play them until they had tried them over privately; and the gentlemen seemed so much disappointed that, having turned over the pages and seen that they were perfectly easy, I timidly offered my services. They were really pretty, and, after the difficult music I had had to read with Mr. Rayner, they were like child’s-play to me. When I had got to the end of the first, I received an ovation. The owner of the music was in ecstasies, and those who had begun to dance stopped and joined the rest in a chorus of admiration that made me quite ashamed of myself. “Didn’t you know that I am a governess?” said I to one gentleman, laughing and blushing. “Yes; but we thought you were only for show,” said Mrs. Clowes. And I played the rest of the waltzes, and thought how much nicer it was to play for these people than for those I had met at Mrs. Manners’s tea-party. Then the gentleman they called Tom, whose name I had now found out to be Mr. Carruthers, led me away from the piano, saying I was not to be made a victim all the evening for other people’s amusement; and, telling a gentleman who was talking to me that he and I were going to have a serious conversation and were not to be disturbed, he took me to a deep window where there were seats, and gave me one, while he threw himself into another beside me. “How beautifully you play!” said he, leaning over my chair and looking at me. “I never knew such a pretty girl as you take the trouble to learn anything properly before.” I had been so much spoilt that day by flattery that I only answered calmly-- “Why shouldn’t pretty people learn things as well as ugly people, Mr. Carruthers?” “Don’t call me ‘Mr. Carruthers’; nobody calls me ‘Mr. Carruthers’--at least, nobody nice. If you don’t yet feel equal to saying ‘Tom,’ let the matter remain in abeyance for the present. Now, to continue from the point where I lost my temper, ugly people have to be accomplished and good and all sorts of things, to get a little of the attention that a pretty person can get without any trouble at all.”