t. The impulse is always
to rush into action, and it is difficult to sit still and agree with the
elderly precept in favour of consideration and delay. If matters had
been left to Claire she would have started out forthwith to search for a
cheap Pension, and would have also despatched a letter to Miss
Farnborough by the first post, to inquire if the school post were still
open, but her mother vetoed both proposals, and pleaded so urgently for
delay, that there was nothing left but to agree, and compose herself as
best she might.

The weather was too hot for tennis, and in truth Claire was not in the
mood for games. With every hour she realised more keenly that she had
come to the parting of the ways, and in the prospect of a new life old
interests lost their savour. Her mother seemed to share her
restlessness, but while Claire preferred to stay indoors, in the privacy
of her own room, Mrs Gifford seemed to find relief in action, and was
often out for hours at a time, without vouchsafing any explanation of
her absence.

Claire was not curious. She was content to close the green shutters of
her windows, slip into a muslin wrapper, and employ herself at some
simple piece of needlework, which kept her hands busy while leaving her
thoughts free.

Where would she be this time next year? It was a question which no
mortal can answer with certainty, but many of us are happy in the
probability that we shall be still living in the same dear home,
surrounded by the people and the objects which we love, whereas Claire's
one certainty was that she must move on to fresh scenes. Bombay or
London--that seemed the choice ahead! Matrimony or teaching. On the
one hand a luxurious home, carriages and horses, a staff of servants,
and apparently as much society as one desired, with the incubus of a
husband whom she did not love, and who was twenty years her senior. On
the other hand, work and poverty, with the advantages of freedom and
independence.

Claire's eyes brightened at the sound of those two words, for dear as
liberty is to the heart of an Englishwoman, it was in prospect dearer
still to this girl who had been educated in a country still enslaved by
chaperonage, and had never known a taste of real freedom of action.
Mrs Gifford had been as strict as or stricter than any Belgian mother,
being rightly determined that no breath of scandal should touch her
daughter's name; therefore wherever Claire went, some responsible f