er see below the surface?"

"I don't quite understand you."

"Do you think your aunt's only motive in wishing Mr. Ovid Vere to leave
London is anxiety about his health? Do you feel no suspicion that she
wants to keep him away from You?"

Carmina toyed with her locket, in an embarrassment which she was quite
unable to disguise. "Are you afraid to trust me?" Miss Minerva asked.
That reproach opened the girl's lips instantly.

"I am afraid to tell you how foolish I am," she answered. "Perhaps, I
still feel a little strangeness between us? It seems to be so formal to
call you Miss Minerva. I don't know what your Christian name is. Will
you tell me?"

Miss Minerva replied rather unwillingly. "My name is Frances. Don't call
me Fanny!"

"Why not?"

"Because it's too absurd to be endured! What does the mere sound of
Fanny suggest? A flirting, dancing creature--plump and fair, and playful
and pretty!" She went to the looking-glass, and pointed disdainfully to
the reflection of herself. "Sickening to think of," she said, "when you
look at that. Call me Frances--a man's name, with only the difference
between an i and an e. No sentiment in it; hard, like me. Well, what was
it you didn't like to say of yourself?"

Carmina dropped her voice to a whisper. "It's no use asking me what I
do see, or don't see, in my aunt," she answered. "I am afraid we shall
never be--what we ought to be to each other. When she came to that
concert, and sat by me and looked at me--" She stopped, and shuddered
over the recollection of it.

Miss Minerva urged her to go on--first, by a gesture; then by a
suggestion: "They said you fainted under the heat."

"I didn't feel the heat. I felt a horrid creeping all over me. Before I
looked at her, mind!--when I only knew that somebody was sitting next to
me. And then, I did look round. Her eyes and my eyes flashed into each
other. In that one moment, I lost all sense of myself as if I was dead.
I can only tell you of it in that way. It was a dreadful surprise to
me to remember it--and a dreadful pain--when they brought me to myself
again. Though I do look so little and so weak, I am stronger than
people think; I never fainted before. My aunt is--how can I say it
properly?--hard to get on with since that time. Is there something
wicked in my nature? I do believe she feels in the same way towards me.
Yes; I dare say it's imagination, but it's as bad as reality for all
that. Oh, I am sure you are right--