But even broken wine-glasses may be a distraction, and a young lady who has tradesmen's books and the contents of china closets to employ her mind suffers less than the damsel who has nothing to do but to sit by her casement, watching the slow changes of the heavens, and thinking of the absent one. Industrious Charlotte, cutting bread and butter for the little ones, is not so apt to fall in love with Werter as he is to be inspired by a fatal passion for her, since, paltry and sordid a task as Charlotte's may be, it yet requires some thought, or the lady will cut her fingers. A little wholesome household work would have saved poor Elaine from many of those long hours of brooding, in which the lily maid of Astolat contemplated the dark knight's image. Work, the primeval curse, may have been a blessing in disguise after all. Lady Cecil bore her life. She went hither and thither to places in which she felt little interest, amongst people whose companionship seemed so poor a substitute for that brief, sweet friendship of the departed autumn. Ah, what could ever bring back to her heart the thrilling joy of that broken dream? Yet her life was not altogether joyless. It was only the magical, mystical gladness, the delight too deep for words, which had gone out of her existence for ever in the hour of that irrevocable parting on the wet sea-shore. She had friends and companions, a social status, in right of her father's name and race, even amongst the vulgar who knew that she was only a penniless dependant upon the sharp-spoken dowager. Perhaps the friend with whom Cecil Chudleigh's proud reserve was most often wont to melt into tender sympathy was Florence Crawford, the frivolous divinity at whose shrine the young landscape painter had laid his heart and his ambition. They had met "in society," as Flo said, with a little air, which implied that the only society in the civilised world was the circle wherein Miss Crawford revolved: and they had taken a fancy to each other, according to Florence, though it must be confessed the fancy had been chiefly on her own side, as Cecil was not prone to sudden friendships.