“Papa is coming to fetch me, to-morrow,” said Sara Cresswell, in rather a discontented tone. “There is to be some ridiculous ball, or something. Can anybody imagine anything so absurd as asking people to a ball when you want to show you’re sorry to part with them? and papa might have known, if he had ever taken the trouble to think, that I have no dress----” “Sara, child! how many hundreds a year do you give your dressmaker?” said I. “That has nothing whatever to do with it, godmamma,” said Sara, making a slightly confused pause; and then resuming, with a defiant look into my face,--“if I might give one hundred a year away out of all papa has got, I could live upon one dress in a year; but what is the use of shillings and sixpences to beggars, or of saving up a few pounds additional to papa? I don’t call that any economy. If we were living according to nature, it would be quite different; then I should want no ball-dresses. Besides,” continued the refractory creature, “I don’t want to go; and if papa insists on me going, why shouldn’t I get some pleasure out of it? Everything else will be just the same as usual, of course.--Godmamma,” exclaimed Sara suddenly, with a new thought, “will you ask papa anything about this business? it is not done with yet. He will come back, and all will have to be gone over again. Will you mention it to papa?” She had been thinking of it too,--she, thoughtless as she was, found something in it not of a kind to die away and be passed over. I could not mistake, nor pretend to mistake, what she meant; it was to be read in her very eyes. “My dear, I have told you already that your godmamma can have nothing whatever to do with this young man,” said I, with a little irritation; “if she is out of sorts it is nobody’s business. Do you fancy she could keep up an acquaintance with an Italian countess for more than twenty years, and I know nothing of it? Nonsense! Some fancy, or some old recollections, or something, had an effect upon her just at the moment. Speak to your father! Why, you told me he knew nothing about the Countess Sermoneta. Shall I ask him to feel your godmamma’s pulse and prescribe for her? or do you suppose, even if he were fit for that, your godmamma would allow it, without feeling herself ill? Your papa is highly respectable, and has always been much trusted by the family. But there are things with which one’s solicitor has nothing whatever to do; there are things which belong to one’s self, and to nobody else in the world.”