ng, ordered books for her,
and consulted her on improvements that pained her by the very fact of
change. She gave her attention sweetly and gratefully, was always at his
call, and amused his evenings with cards or music, but she felt herself
dull and sad, and saw him disappointed in her.

Then she tried bringing in Bertha as entertainment for both, but it was a
downright failure. Bertha was far too sharp and pert for an elder
brother devoid both of wit and temper, and the only consequence was that
she fathomed his shallow acquirements in literature and the natural
sciences, and he pronounced her to be eaten up with conceit, and the most
intolerable child he ever saw--an irremediable insult to a young woman of
fifteen; nor could Bertha be brought forward without disappointing Maria,
whose presence Mervyn would not endure, and thus Phoebe was forced to
yield the point, and keep in the background the appendages only tolerated
for her sake.

Greatly commiserating Bertha's weariness of the schoolroom, she tried to
gratify the governess and please her sisters by resuming her studies; but
the motive of duty and obedience being gone, these were irksome to a mind
naturally meditative and practical, and she found herself triumphed over
by Bertha for forgetting whether Lucca were Guelf or Ghibelline, putting
oolite below red sandstone, or confusing the definition of ozone. She
liked Bertha to surpass her; but inattention she regarded as wrong in
itself, as well as a bad example, and her apologies were so hearty as
quite to affect Miss Fennimore.

Mervyn's attentions wore off with the days of seclusion. By the third
week he was dining out, by the fourth he was starting for Goodwood, half
inviting Phoebe to come with him, and assuring her that it was just what
she wanted to put her into spirits again. Poor Phoebe--when Mr.
Henderson talking to Miss Fennimore, and Bertha at the same time
insisting on Decandolle's system to Miss Charlecote, had seemed to create
a distressing whirl and confusion!

Miss Fennimore smiled, both with pleasure and amusement, as Phoebe asked
her permission to walk to the Holt, and be fetched home by the carriage
at night.

'Don't laugh at me,' said Phoebe. 'I am so glad to have some one's leave
to ask.'

'I will not laugh, my dear, but I will not help you to reverse our
positions. It is better we should both be accustomed to them.'

'It seems selfish to take the carriage for myself,' said Phoe