you are almost without friends.'

She hesitated. 'Why should you tell me that?' she said.

'In the hope that you will be frank with me.'

'I am not altogether without friends here. But I am going to make a
little change in my life--to go out as a teacher of freehand drawing and
practical perspective, of course I mean on a comparatively humble scale,
because I have not been specially educated for that profession. But I am
sure I shall like it much.'

'You have an opening?'

'I have not exactly got it, but I have advertised for one.'

'Lucy, you must let me help you!'

'Not at all.'

'You need not think it would compromise you, or that I am indifferent to
delicacy. I bear in mind how we stand. It is very unlikely that you
will succeed as teacher of the class you mention, so let me do something
of a different kind for you. Say what you would like, and it shall be
done.'

'No; if I can't be a drawing-mistress or governess, or something of that
sort, I shall go to India and join my brother.'

'I wish I could go abroad, anywhere, everywhere with you, Lucy, and leave
this place and its associations for ever!'

She played with the end of her bonnet-string, and hastily turned aside.
'Don't ever touch upon that kind of topic again,' she said, with a quick
severity not free from anger. 'It simply makes it impossible for me to
see you, much less receive any guidance from you. No, thank you, Mr.
Barnet; you can do nothing for me at present; and as I suppose my
uncertainty will end in my leaving for India, I fear you never will. If
ever I think you can do anything, I will take the trouble to ask you.
Till then, good-bye.'

The tone of her latter words was equivocal, and while he remained in
doubt whether a gentle irony was or was not inwrought with their sound,
she swept lightly round and left him alone. He saw her form get smaller
and smaller along the damp belt of sea-sand between ebb and flood; and
when she had vanished round the cliff into the harbour-road, he himself
followed in the same direction.

That her hopes from an advertisement should be the single thread which
held Lucy Savile in England was too much for Barnet. On reaching the
town he went straight to the residence of Downe, now a widower with four
children. The young motherless brood had been sent to bed about a
quarter of an hour earlier, and when Barnet entered he found Downe
sitting alone. It was the same room as that from which the fam