“Julia, you have no right to discuss your sister.” “Oh, but you can’t stop me doing it!” said Julia, with composure; “you can stop me when--when I’m silly myself. I was a great fool, I know. I thought once I could drive you away--no, I didn’t want to drive you away. I wanted to get the upper hand; but you’ve got the upper hand of me, and I don’t mind now. However, that’s quite different. This is a free country, and I can say what I please of Gussy. I say that it’s she----” “As it is a free country, you can’t compel me to listen,” said Janet; “but there is one thing in which it is not a free country, and that is that you are not permitted to be ill-bred. It is not allowed to be vulgar.” “Oh!” cried Julia, coloring to her eyes, but affecting to laugh, “as if there were not hundreds and thousands?” Janet shrugged her little shoulders in a manner which her pupil, rebellious, but admiring, thought irresistible. “Out in the streets, perhaps: so are there applewomen, and people who sell matches. But in good time here comes the tray, and something for you to do.” Janet, however, was not far from being of Julia’s opinion. Miss Harwood, who had been so calm, who had explained that the quiet family life so unbroken, the long evenings of needlework and talk, might appear dull to Janet, but were never dull to her mother and herself, now went through these evenings as in a dream. Meredith came twice, sometimes three times, in a week, after dinner, as he had done on his first appearance. He had privileges which were extended to no one else, and it was never known on which evening he would appear. He even took pains, Janet thought, to have no rule, to appear suddenly when he was not looked for. But to this spectator, whose attention was fixed upon Gussy, as on the heroine of the drama, it was very easily apparent that there was no evening on which he was not expected. She worked, she talked, she made her little disquisitions as usual, but there was a certain fixed attitude of her head, a little almost imperceptible pause now and then in the movements of her hands, which showed that she was listening for the summons at the door, the step outside. In the quietness of the semi-rural suburban road the step of the rare passenger was sometimes heard even outside the garden wall. Sometimes Mrs. Harwood would say, “I wonder if that is Charley Meredith?” to which Gussy would reply, with beautiful composure, “Oh, no; he is always engaged on Thursdays!” or, “This is never one of his free nights.”