Lilly went into the advanced class, called "Selecta," when she was fifteen and a half, for it had been settled that she was to earn her living as a governess. This was a great change; everything was different--teachers, girls, lessons, and friendship meant a different thing. You were not called by your Christian name. There was no throwing of paper pellets and going home to find blotting-paper in your hair. Much was said about "the sacredness of vocation," of "noble living," and consecration of life to work, and at the same time there was no end of chatter about love affairs and secret engagements. Lilly felt for the first time in her life a little envious. She was neither engaged nor had she any love affair to boast of. Anonymous presents of flowers, with verses signed "Thine for ever," of course didn't count. But in time it came. Love began to dawn in an imaginary atmosphere of marble statues and pillars, of dusky cypresses and eternally blue skies; it was the adoration of a schoolgirl for a master, and the longing to be a benefactress to the adored one. He was the assistant science-master, and taught in the junior school, where knuckles were rapped with the ruler and tongues thrust out in retort. He did nothing in the higher school, but he gave lectures to the young ladies of the Selecta on the history of Art. The very name of "Art" fills the budding soul of a young girl with ecstasy; how much more intense then was the sentiment when Art was associated with an interesting young man of delicate health, with deep-set burning eyes, and a snow-white brow--a young man who was called Arpad? Here romance ended. What remained behind it was a poor consumptive young fellow who had painfully accomplished his university career by private tutoring, only to be doomed to an early grave at the moment that he hoped to reap the fruits of his drudgery. The authorities did the best they could for him. They gave him easy work, and when they saw the hectic flush on his cheek they supplied his place and sent him home for a term. But this could not last, and, feeling that he was becoming a burden to the staff, he strove by suicidal efforts to show himself still capable of working. He volunteered to undertake all sorts of duties outside his province, and what men in health shirked he with one foot in the grave cheerfully took on his shoulders.