had better write. "Could we not go somewhere?" she
replied with a look of trouble on her brow.

"Run away from home on account of Miss Altifiorla?" said he. She was
beginning to be afraid of him and knew that it was so. She did not
dare to declare to him her thoughts and was afraid at every moment
that he should read them.

"Then I must just tell her that we can't have her."

"That will be best,--if you have made up your mind. As far as I am
concerned she is welcome. Any friend of yours would be welcome."

"Oh, George, she would bore you out of your life!"

"I am not so easily bored. I am sure that any intimate friend of
yours would have something to say for herself."

"Oh, plenty."

"And as for her having been an advocate for single life, she had not
seen me and therefore her reasons could not have been personal. There
are a great many young women, thirty years old and upwards, who take
up the idea. They do not wish to subject themselves,--perhaps because
they have not been asked by the right person."

"I don't think there have been any persons here. Not that she is bad
looking."

"Perhaps you think I shall fall in love with her."

"I'd have her directly. But she is the last person in the world I
should think of."

"I can get on very well with anyone who has an idea. There is at
any rate something to strike at. The young lady who agrees with
everything and suggests nothing, is to me the most intolerable. At
any rate you had better make up your mind at once or you'll have her
here before you know where you are."

It was this which did, indeed, happen. On the day after the last
conversation Mrs. Western wrote her letter. In it she expressed her
sorrow that engagements for the present prevented her from having
the power to entertain her friend. No doubt the letter was cold and
unfriendly. As she read it over to herself she declared that she
would have been much hurt to have received such a letter from her
friend. But she declared again that under no circumstances could
she have offered herself as Miss Altifiorla had done. Nevertheless
she felt ashamed of the letter. All of which, however, became quite
unnecessary, when, in the course of the afternoon, Miss Altifiorla
appeared at Durton Lodge. She arrived with a torrent of reasons. She
had come up to London on business which admitted of no excuse. She
was sure that her friend's letter must have gone astray,--that letter
which for the last three days she ha