Lottie had not risen from her seat, but as she sat there, everything round seemed to waver about her, then settle down again in a sudden revelation of mean, and small, and paltry life, such as she had scarcely ever realised before. Not only the lofty heaven into which the music had carried her rolled away like a scroll, but the other world, which was beautiful also of its kind, from which she had fled, which had seemed too poor to remain in, after the preceding ecstasy, departed as with a glimmer of wings; and she found herself awaking in a life where everything was squalid and poor, where she alone, with despairing efforts, tried to prop up the house that it might not fall into dishonoured dust. She had borne with a kind of contemptuous equanimity Law’s first story about her father. Let him marry again! she had said; if he could secure the thing he called his happiness in such a way, let him do it. The idea had filled her with a high scorn. She had not thought of herself nor of the effect it might have upon her, but had risen superior to it with lofty contempt, and put it from her mind. But this was different. With all her high notions of gentility, and all her longings after a more splendid sphere, this sudden revelation of a sphere meaner, lower still, struck Lottie with a sudden pang. A pack of girls! what kind of girls could those be of whom Law spoke? Her blood rushed to her face scorching her with shame. She who scorned the Chevaliers and their belongings! She who had “kept her distance” from her own class, was it possible that she was to be dragged down lower, lower, to shame itself? Her voice was choked in her throat. She did not feel able to speak. She could only cry out to him, clasping her hands, “Don’t tell me any more--oh, don’t tell me any more----” “Hillo!” said the lad, “what is the matter with you? Don’t tell you any more? You will soon know a great deal more if you don’t do something to put a stop to it. There ought to be a law against it. A man’s children ought to be able to put a stop to it. I told you before, Lottie, if you don’t exert yourself and do something----” “Oh,” she said, rising to her feet, “what can I do? Can I put honour into you, and goodness, and make you what I want you to be? Oh, if I could, Law! I would give you my blood out of my veins if I could. But I can’t put me into you,” she said, wringing her hands--“and you expect me to listen to stories--about people I ought not to hear of--about women--Oh, Law, Law, how dare you speak so to me?” “Hold hard!” said Law, “you don’t know what you are speaking of. The girls are as good girls as you are--” his own cheeks flushed with indignant shame as he spoke. “You are just like what they say of women. You are always thinking of something bad. What are you after all, Lottie Despard? A poor shabby Captain’s daughter! You make your own gowns and they make other people’s. I don’t see such a dreadful difference in that.”