there, of all places in the world, without
something nice."

There was another silence after this. Theo had gone back to her work
with a sigh, and Miss Pamela was stitching industriously. She was never
idle, and always taciturn, and on this occasion her mind was fully
occupied. She was thinking of Lady Throckmorton's invitation too.

Her ladyship was a half-sister of their father's, and from the height of
her grandeur magnanimously patronizing now and then. It was during her
one visit to London, under this relative's patronage, that Pamela had
met Arthur Brunwalde, and it was through her that the match had been
made. But when Arthur died, and she found that Pamela was fixed in her
determination to make a sacrifice of her youth on the altar of her dead
love, Lady Throckmorton lost patience. It was absurd, she said; Mr.
North could not afford it, and if Pamela persisted, she would wash her
hands of the whole affair. But Pamela was immovable, and, accordingly,
had never seen her patroness since. It so happened, however, that her
ladyship had suddenly recollected Theo, whose gipsy face had once struck
her fancy, and the result of the sudden recollection was another
invitation. Her letter had arrived that very morning at breakfast time,
and had caused some sensation. A visit to London, under such auspices,
was more than the most sanguine had ever dared to dream of.

"I wish I was Theo," Joanna had grumbled. "She always gets the lion's
share of everything, because Elin and I are a bit younger than she is."

And Theo had glowed up to her soft, innocent eyes, and neglected the
bread-and-butter cutting, to awaken a moment later to sudden despair.

"But--but I have nothing fit to wear, mamma," she said, in anguished
tones.

"No," answered Mrs. North, two or three new lines showing themselves on
her harassed forehead; "and we can't afford to buy anything. You can't
go, Theo."

And so the castle which had towered so promisingly in the air a moment
ago, was dashed to the dust with one touch of shabby gentility's
tarnished wand. The glow died out of Theo's face, and she went back to
her bread-and-butter cutting with a soreness of disappointment which
was, nevertheless, not without its own desperate resignation. This was
why she had watched the tide come in with such a forlorn sense of
sympathy with the dull sweep of the gray waves, and their dull, creeping
moan; this was why she had been rash enough to hope for a crumb of
sym