Ella was superintending her packing. Her maid having gone out for a moment, she sat on the edge of the bed (leaving, with feminine sureness of pose, the dainty piles of garments aforesaid unscathed), and gazed critically at a hat which she held on outstretched fingers thrust into the crown. In a dark silk blouse and a plain skirt, and with her auburn hair somewhat ruffled, she looked very simple and girlish. Lady Milmo, occupying the only vacant chair opposite, also regarded the hat with the eye of experience. The examination had, however, come to an end, for Ella, after flicking the great bows with the finger-tips of her disengaged hand, threw the confection lightly on the top of the pile, and putting her hands in her lap resignedly, turned to her aunt. “I am sure Josephine will disappoint me with the blue dress.” “Oh, no, my dear,” said Lady Milmo, “kingdoms may fall and empires may decay, but Josephine never fails. A woman of her word, my dear. Don't you know what she did for La Guira, the singer? La Guira ordered four dresses to take away with her to Patagonia or somewhere. It was impossible to finish them before the morning of departure. Josephine herself raced with them to Waterloo in a hansom just in time to see the train with La Guira in it steam out of the station; and that woman took a special there and then, and chased the train and got the dresses on board all right. Josephine is a marvellous woman.” Ella laughed. She did not care very much. Her life at that moment was too full. “It's quite sweet of the sun to come in and see me, isn't it?” she said. “Provided he keeps up his good behaviour to-morrow,” said Lady Milmo. “Oh, I sha'n't mind what he does tomorrow; I shall have too many things to think of.” “But what about us poor unfortunates who are not going to be married?” “You could be married now, fifty times over, auntie, if you chose,” said Ella, out of her lightness of heart. “The Lord preserve me!” replied Lady Milmo, vivaciously. “When poor Howgate died I vowed that when we met in heaven, if there is one, no other man should stand between us.” As the late Sir Howgate Milmo, Bart., had been a notoriously evil liver, Ella did not think there was much chance of her aunt escaping forsworn, even on her hypothesis. “One can love heaps of times, you know,” she said, stretching out her limbs girlishly and looking at the tips of her shoes. “Love your husband once and for all, my dear,” said her aunt, sententiously. Ella rose to her feet and crossed over to her aunt's chair and sat on the arm, and kissed Lady Milmo. A spontaneous caress like that was rare with her, and the recipient looked up in pleased surprise. But Ella had grasped her fate in both hands and felt mistress thereof, and all seemed right with the world. She had compelled herself into entire happiness. “Of course I do--or I shall,” she replied. “Do you think I could marry a man to whom I did not feel I could give all that is in me?”