"Will you let me have Antoinette?" said the lady smiling. "I think it would do her no harm." "Antoinette must content herself at home," Antoinette's mother replied. "I am accustomed to having her under my own wing." "And that is a privilege you would not yield to any one else. I understand. Well, what do you say about Miss Carpenter?" Mrs. Busby looked at her husband. Long experience enabled him to guess at what he was desired to say. "My dear--since Mrs. Mowbray is so kind--it would be a great thing for Rotha the best thing that could happen to her--" Mrs. Busby turned her eyes to her visiter. "Since you are so good, Mrs. Mowbray--it is more than I could ask you to do--" "I shall be very glad to do it. I am nothing if not professional, you know," Mrs. Mowbray said rising and drawing her fur together again. "Then that is settled."-- And with gracious deference and sweetness of manner she took her leave. "That's what I call a good riddance!" exclaimed Antoinette when she was free to express her opinion. "You will find it a happy relief," added Mr. Busby. "And not a little saving, too." Mrs. Busby was silent. With all the relief and the saving, there was yet something in the plan which did not suit her. Nevertheless, the relief, and the saving, were undoubted facts; and she held her tongue. "Mamma, what are you going to do about Rotha's dresses?" "I will see, when she comes to me with a proper apology." Of all this nothing was told to Rotha. So she was a little surprised, when next morning Mrs. Mowbray came into the schoolroom and desired to see her after school. But then Mrs. Mowbray's first words were about her cold. "My dear, you are very hoarse! You can hardly speak. And you feel miserably, I see. I shall sequester you at once. Come with me." Wondering but obedient, Rotha followed. What was going to happen now? Up stairs, along a ball, up another flight of stairs, past the great schoolrooms, now empty, through a small bedroom, through a large one, along another passage. At last a door is opened, into what, as Rotha enters it, seems to her a domestic paradise. The air deliciously warm and sweet, the walls full of engravings or other pictures, tables heaped with books, a luxuriously appointed bed and dressing tables, (what to Rotha's eyes was enormous luxury)--finally a couch, where she was made to lie down and covered over with a brilliant affghan. Rotha was transported into the strangest of new worlds. Her new friend arranged the pillow under her head, gave her some tasteless medicine; that was a wonderful innovation too, for all Rotha's small experience had been of nauseous rhubarb and magnesia or stinging salts; and finally commanded her to lie still and go to sleep. "But aunt Serena--?" Rotha managed to whisper.