earnest to listen and sympathize.

"This person--a lady--once admired a man much--very much," she said
tentatively.

"Ah," said Elizabeth-Jane.

"They were intimate--rather. He did not think so deeply of her as she
did of him. But in an impulsive moment, purely out of reparation, he
proposed to make her his wife. She agreed. But there was an unsuspected
hitch in the proceedings; though she had been so far compromised with
him that she felt she could never belong to another man, as a pure
matter of conscience, even if she should wish to. After that they were
much apart, heard nothing of each other for a long time, and she felt
her life quite closed up for her."

"Ah--poor girl!"

"She suffered much on account of him; though I should add that he could
not altogether be blamed for what had happened. At last the obstacle
which separated them was providentially removed; and he came to marry
her."

"How delightful!"

"But in the interval she--my poor friend--had seen a man, she liked
better than him. Now comes the point: Could she in honour dismiss the
first?"

"A new man she liked better--that's bad!"

"Yes," said Lucetta, looking pained at a boy who was swinging the town
pump-handle. "It is bad! Though you must remember that she was forced
into an equivocal position with the first man by an accident--that he
was not so well educated or refined as the second, and that she had
discovered some qualities in the first that rendered him less desirable
as a husband than she had at first thought him to be."

"I cannot answer," said Elizabeth-Jane thoughtfully. "It is so
difficult. It wants a Pope to settle that!"

"You prefer not to perhaps?" Lucetta showed in her appealing tone how
much she leant on Elizabeth's judgment.

"Yes, Miss Templeman," admitted Elizabeth. "I would rather not say."

Nevertheless, Lucetta seemed relieved by the simple fact of having
opened out the situation a little, and was slowly convalescent of her
headache. "Bring me a looking-glass. How do I appear to people?" she
said languidly.

"Well--a little worn," answered Elizabeth, eyeing her as a critic eyes
a doubtful painting; fetching the glass she enabled Lucetta to survey
herself in it, which Lucetta anxiously did.

"I wonder if I wear well, as times go!" she observed after a while.

"Yes--fairly.

"Where am I worst?"

"Under your eyes--I notice a little brownness there."

"Yes. That is my worst place, I know. How many years mor