During the days that followed, Flossie devised an ingenious method of tormenting Ella; she laid out her pocket-money, of which she had a good deal, on the most preposterous ornaments--a pair of dangling cut-glass lustres, bead mats, a trophy of wax fruit under a glass shade, gaudy fire-screens and flowerpots, all of which she solemnly presented to her suffering sister. This was not pure mischief or unkindness on Flossie's side, but part of a treatment she had hit upon for curing Ella of her folly. And at last the worm turned. Flossie came in one day with a cheap plush and terra-cotta panel of appalling ugliness. 'For the drawing-room, dear,' she observed blandly, and Ella suddenly burst into a flood of tears. 'You are very, very unkind to me, Flossie!' she sobbed. 'I!' exclaimed Flossie, in a tone of the most innocent surprise. 'Why, Ella, I thought you would be charmed with it. I'm sure _George_ will. And, you know, it will go beautifully with the rest of your things!' 'You might understand ... you might see----' 'I might see what?' 'How _frightfully_ miserable I am!' said Ella, which was the very admission Miss Flossie had been seeking to provoke. 'Suppose I _do_ see,' she said; 'suppose I've been trying to get you to act sensibly, Ella?' 'Then it's cruel of you!' 'No it's not. It's kind. How am I to help you unless you speak out? I'm younger than you, Ella, but I know this--_I_ would never mope and make myself miserable when a word would put everything right!' 'But it wouldn't, Flossie; it is too late to speak now. I can't tell him how I really feel--I can't!' 'Ah, then you own there is something to tell?' 'What have I said? Flossie, forget what I said; it slipped out. I meant nothing.' 'And you are perfectly happy and satisfied, are you? _Now_, I know how people look when they are perfectly happy and satisfied.' 'It's no use!' cried Ella, suddenly. 'I've tried, and tried, and tried to bear it, but I can't. I _must_ tell somebody ... it is making me ill. I am getting cross and wicked, and unlike what I used to be. Flossie, I can't go and live there--I dread the thought of it; I shrink from it more and more every day! It is all odious, impossible--and yet I must, I must!' 'No, you mustn't; and, what's more, you shan't!' 'Flossie, you mean you will tell mother! You must not, do you hear? If you do, it will only make matters worse. Oh, why did I tell you?' cried Ella, in shame at this lapse from all her heroism. 'Promise me you will say nothing to mother--it is too late now--promise!' 'Very well,' said Flossie reluctantly; 'then I promise. But, all the same, Ella, I think you're a great goose!' 'I didn't promise I wouldn't say anything to _George_, though,' she reflected; and so, on the very next occasion that she caught him alone, she availed herself of an innocent allusion of his to Ella's low spirits to give him the benefit of her candid opinion, which was not tempered by any marked consideration for his feelings.