"She has gone to the Square to see to the children's dresses for to-morrow," answered Flo with a sigh. The thought of that bridal finery carried her back from Lucy Ashton's omen-haunted courtship to all the frivolous splendours of her own wedding. "Why didn't you come to me, dear?" asked the painter: "I should have liked to have had you with me on this last day." "I thought you were working hard, papa, and I didn't like to interrupt you. And--and--I felt rather melancholy to-day. This house seems such a dear old place now I'm going to leave it: and I love you so dearly, papa, though I have never given you any proof of my love." She clung to him as she spoke, and hid her face upon his breast. There were a few tears upon the collar of Mr. Crawford's coat when Flo lifted her head and slipped her hand through his arm, to lead him towards the dining-room. "Tell me that I have not been a _very_ wicked daughter, papa," said Flo pleadingly. "I'm sure I feel as if I were Goneril and Regan and those two dreadful sisters in Balzac's _Père Goriot_ all in one." "My pet, you have been a charming daughter," answered the painter, smiling. "Yes, papa, but not a good one." "As good as you have been charming, my darling, though just a little bewildering sometimes in the way of slang phrases and Wellington boots. There, there, let me see my own bright Flo again. I suppose it's only natural that this last day should make you a little melancholy; but a lady of fashion ought not to be melancholy, even on the last day of her girlhood. I have always had a vague idea that nobody ever cried on the Piccadilly side of Oxford-Street. Of course people must die everywhere, and there are grand funerals, and hatchments on house-fronts, and court-mourning at the West-end; but I did not think fashionable people were ever sorry. They seem to me like actors and pantomimists, obliged to put private griefs aside in order to comply with the exigencies of public life. Come, darling, we are to dine _tête-à-tête_ to-day. You must imagine yourself a woman of fashion, who has taken a fancy for entertaining a popular painter." "I had rather be your loving daughter, papa, and forget all about fashion," Flo answered sadly. All the feverish gaiety of the last few weeks had departed, leaving a very real sadness in its place. But Miss Crawford was not the sort of person to abandon herself weakly to any morbid feelings. She saw her father's eyes fixed upon her in earnest watchfulness, and shook off her despondency with one of those heroic efforts of which even frivolous women are capable. She talked gaily all through the cosy little _tête-à-tête_ dinner, which the painter found very agreeable after that surfeit of Aunt Jane's society, from which he had suffered of late. Throughout that pleasant dinner there was a tacit avoidance of all allusion to the grand event so near at hand. Flo talked of any thing and every thing except Mr. Lobyer and the future.