and it is
very pleasant to see your affection for your former employers. Do you
suppose that they will remain here much longer?"

"Remain!" exclaimed La Fleur; "they've never said a word to me, madam,
about going away, and I don't believe they have thought of it. I am sure
I haven't."

Miss Panney shook her head.

"It's none of my business," she said, "but I've lived a long time in this
world, and that gives me a right to speak my mind to people who haven't
lived so long. It may have been all very well for the Dranes to have come
here for a little vacation of a week or ten days, but to stay on and on
is not the proper thing at all, and if you really have a regard for them,
La Fleur, I think it is your duty to make them understand this. You might
not care to speak plainly, of course, but you can easily make them
perceive the situation, without offending them, or saying anything which
an old servant might not say, in a case like this."

"But, madam," said La Fleur, "what's to hinder their stopping here?
There's no spot on earth that could suit them better, to my way of
thinking."

"La Fleur," said Miss Panney, regarding the other with moderate severity,
"you ought to know that when people see a young woman like Miss Drane
brought to live in a house with a handsome young gentleman, who, to all
intents and purposes, is keeping a bachelor's hall,--for that girl
upstairs is entirely too young to be considered a mistress of a
house,--and when they know that the young lady's mother is a lady in
impoverished circumstances, the people are bound to say, when they talk,
that that young woman was brought here on purpose to catch the master of
the house, and I don't think, La Fleur, that you would like to hear that
said of Mrs. Drane."

As she listened, the bodily eyes of La Fleur were contracted until they
were almost shut, but her mental eyes opened wider and wider. She
suspected that there was something back of Miss Panney's words.

"If I heard anybody say that, madam, meaning it, I don't think they would
care to say it to me again. But leaving out all that and looking at the
matter with my lights, it does seem to me that if Mr. Haverley wanted a
mistress for his house, and felt inclined to marry Miss Cicely Drane, he
couldn't make a better choice."

"Choice!" repeated Miss Panney, sarcastically. "He has no choice to make.
That is settled, and that is the very reason why people will talk the
more and sharper, and nothing