“Mind you give my love to Hyacinth,” the girl said, with an assurance which showed all her insensibility to tacit protests. “I don’t care if you do guess that if I have stopped so long it was in the hope he would be dropping in to his tea. You can tell him I sat an hour, on purpose, if you like; there’s no shame in my wanting to see my little friend. He may know I call him that!” Millicent continued, with her show-room laugh, as Miss Pynsent judged it to be; conferring these permissions, successively, as if they were great indulgences. “Do give him my love, and tell him I hope he’ll come and see me. I see you won’t tell him anything. I don’t know what you’re afraid of; but I’ll leave my card for him, all the same.” She drew forth a little bright-coloured pocket-book, and it was with amazement that Miss Pynsent saw her extract from it a morsel of engraved pasteboard—so monstrous did it seem that one of the squalid little Hennings should have lived to display this emblem of social consideration. Millicent enjoyed the effect she produced as she laid the card on the table, and gave another ringing peal of merriment at the sight of her hostess’s half-angry, half-astonished look. “What _do_ you think I want to do with him? I could swallow him at a single bite!” she cried. Poor Amanda gave no second glance at the document on the table, though she had perceived it contained, in the corner, her visitor’s address, which Millicent had amused herself, ingeniously, with not mentioning: she only got up, laying down her work with a trembling hand, so that she should be able to see Miss Henning well out of the house. “You needn’t think I shall put myself out to keep him in the dark. I shall certainly tell him you have been here, and exactly how you strike me.” “Of course you’ll say something nasty—like you used to when I was a child. You let me ’ave it then, you know!” “Ah, well,” said Miss Pynsent, nettled at being reminded of an acerbity which the girl’s present development caused to appear ridiculously ineffectual, “you are very different now, when I think what you’ve come from.” “What I’ve come from?” Millicent threw back her head, and opened her eyes very wide, while all her feathers and ribbons nodded. “Did you want me to stick fast in this low place for the rest of my days? You have had to stay in it yourself, so you might speak civilly of it.” She coloured, and raised her voice, and looked magnificent in her scorn. “And pray what have you come from yourself, and what has _he_ come from—the mysterious ‘Mr Robinson’, that used to be such a puzzle to the whole Place? I thought perhaps I might clear it up, but you haven’t told me that yet!” Miss Pynsent turned straight away, covering her ears with her hands. “I have nothing to tell you! Leave my room—leave my house!” she cried, with a trembling voice. V