new proof of Mrs. Potten's meanness. What
she, Gwen, had done had harmed nobody practically.

"I'm miserable!" she burst out.

"Poor Gwen!" murmured May.

Gwendolen lay still. Her heart was full. When she had once left the
Lodgings, and was at Mrs. Potten's she would be among enemies. Now,
here, at least she had one friend--some one who was not mean and didn't
scold. She must speak to this one kind friend--she would tell her
troubles. She must have some one to confide in.

"I didn't want to break off the engagement," she said at last, unable to
keep her thoughts much longer to herself.

"You didn't want to!" said May gently. It was scarcely a question, but
it drew Gwendolen to an explanation of her words.

"Mrs. Potten made me," she said.

"No one could make you," said May, quietly. "Could they?"

"She did," said Gwen, with a burst of tears. "I wanted to make it all
right, and she wouldn't let me. If only I could have seen the Warden, he
would have taken my side, perhaps," and here Gwen's voice became less
emphatic. "But Mrs. Potten simply made me. She was determined. She hates
me. I can't bear her."

"Had you done absolutely nothing to make her so determined?" asked May
wondering.

"Nothing--except a little joke----" began Gwen. "It was merely a sort of
a joke."

"A joke!" said May, and her voice was very low and strange.

The umbrella standing in the corner of the room in the shadow seemed to
make faces at Gwen. Why hadn't she put the horrid thing in the wardrobe?

"It was only meant as a sort of joke," she repeated, and then the
overwhelming flood of bitter memory coming upon her, she yielded to her
instinct and poured out to May, bit by bit, a broken garbled history of
the whole affair--a story such as Belinda and Co. would tell--a story
made, unconsciously, all the more sordid and pitiful because it was
obviously not the whole truth.

And this was a story told by one who might have been the Warden's wife!
May went on soothing the girl's hair and brow with her hand.

"And Mrs. Potten wouldn't let me make it all right. She refused to let
me, though I begged her to, and gave her my word of honour," wept Gwen,
indignantly. Then she suddenly said, "Oh, the fire's going out and
perhaps you're cold!" for she was fearful lest her visitor would leave
her. "When my dinner was taken away too much coal was put on my fire,
and I was too miserable to make a fuss."

"I'm not cold," said May. "But I will stir