‘I should not have thought Lady Merrifield would have been so like an old schoolmistress. Miss Dormer always did, the old cat! where I went to school,’ said Constance. ‘We did hate it so! She looked over every one’s letters, except parents’, so that we never could have anything nice, except by a chance or so.’ ‘It is tyranny,’ said Dolores, solemnly. ‘I do not see why one should submit to it.’ ‘We had dodges,’ continued Constance, warming with the history of her school-days, and far too eager to talk to think of the harm she might be doing to the younger girl. ‘Sometimes, when a lot of us went to a shop with one of the governesses, one would slip out and post a letter. Fraulein was so short-sighted, she never guessed. We used to call her the jolly old Kafer. But Mademoiselle was very sharp. She once caught Alice Bell, so that she had to make an excuse and say she had dropped something. You see, she really had--the letter into the slit.’ ‘But that was an equivocation.’ ‘Oh, you darling scrupulous, long-worded child! You aren’t like the girls at Miss Dormer’s, only she drove us to it, you know. You’ll be horribly shocked, but I’ll tell you what Louie Preston did. There was a young man in the town whom she had met at a picnic in the holidays--a clerk, he was, at the bank--and he used to put notes to her under the cushions at church; but one unlucky Sunday, Louie had a cold and didn’t go, and she told Mabel Blisset to bring it, and Mabel didn’t understand the right place, and went poking about, so that Miss Dormer found it out, and there was such a row!’ ‘Wasn’t that rather vulgar?’ said Dolores. ‘Well, he was only a clerk, but he was a duck of a man, with regular auburn hair, you know. And he sang! We used to go to the Choral Society concerts, and he sang ballads so beautifully, and always looked at Louie!’ ‘I should not care for anything of that sort,’ said Dolores. ‘I think it is bad form.’ ‘So it is,’ said Constance, seriously, ‘only one can’t help recollecting the fun of the thing, and what one was driven to in those days. Is there any one you are anxious to correspond with?’ ‘Not in particular, only I can’t bear to have Aunt Lilias meddling with my letters; and there’s a poor uncle of mine that I know would not like her, or any of the Mohuns, to see his letters. ‘Indeed! Your poor mamma’s brother?’ cried Constance, full of curiosity. ‘Mind, it is in confidence. You must never tell any one.’ ‘Never. Oh, you may trust me!’ cried Constance. ‘Her half-brother,’ said Dolores; and the girl proceeded to tell Constance what she had told Maude Sefton about Mr. Flinders, and how her mother had been used to assist him out of her own earnings, and how he had met her at Exeter station, and was so disappointed to have missed her father. Constance listened most eagerly, greatly delighted to have a secret confided to her, and promising to keep it with all her might.