Mary looked up with unusual quickness. The words brought to her mind one of the incidents of the past night. "Harry does not continue to tease you, does he, Ethel?" "Yes he does. I thought he had left it off: but this morning he brought the subject up again--and he let everybody hear him!" "What did he say?" "Not very much. It was when he was going out of the room after breakfast. He turned his head to me and said he hoped I should soon be ready with my answer to the question he had put to me more than once. Papa and mamma must have understood what he meant. I could have thrown the loaf after him." "I think he must be only doing it in joke, Ethel," was the slow, thoughtful rejoinder. "I don't know whether he is or not. Sometimes I think he is; at others I think he is in earnest: whichever it may he, I dislike it very much. Not for the whole world would I marry Harry Castlemaine." "Ethel, I fancy--I am not sure, but I fancy--you have no real cause to fear he will press it, or to let it trouble you. Harry is hardly staid enough yet to settle down. He does many random things." "We have had quite a commotion at home this morning," resumed Ethel, passing to another topic. "Somebody locked Flora in her bedroom last night--when she wanted to run out this morning as usual, the door was fast. Mamma has been so angry: and when the news of Polly Gleeson's accident came up just now, she began again, saying Flora might just as well have been burnt also as not, burnt to death." "Who locked her in?" "I don't know--unless it was Madame Guise. Papa and mamma and I were at dinner at Stilborough--at the Barclays', Mary. Harry would not go. It was a nice party. We had singing in the evening." "But about the door?" "Well, Madame Guise thought she might have unintentionally done it. She said she went in last night to look at Flora. I can scarcely think she did it, for she had gone in many a time and never turned the key before. Or the keys of other doors, either." "At least, it does not seem to have been of any consequence. "No; only mamma made it so. I tell you every little trifle that I can, Mary," she added, laughing quietly. "Shut up here, it seems to me that you must like to hear news from the outer world." "And so I do," was the answer. "I have not lost all interest in my fellow pilgrims, I assure you, Ethel." "I wore my black net trimmed with white satin ribbons: you can't think how nice it looked, Mary," said Miss Ethel, some of her vanity creeping to the fore. "And a silver flower in my hair." "I have no doubt the dress and the flower did look well, considering what a pretty girl it was adorning," was Mary's reply. And Ethel blushed slightly. She knew how nice-looking she was. "Does Madame Guise continue to suit?" "Oh, quite well. Mrs. Castlemaine thinks there's nobody to equal her. I like her also; but at times she puzzles me." "How does she puzzle you?"