s shone.

'Oh, I should be glad to meet her! Are you going to let me stay with
you all the afternoon, then?'

'If you have nothing better to do. I suppose I shall be losing you
presently. I'm very sorry. I wish you lived in London.'

'On this one account,' replied Alma, 'I wish I did. But I've got so out
of it. Don't you think I carry a rustic atmosphere about with me?'

Sibyl laughed, in the tone her friend wished to hear. Alma would have
been profoundly mortified if Mrs. Carnaby had seemed ever so little to
agree with her.

For all that, they were not quite so well attuned to each other as when
the young married woman, indifferent seemingly to social distinction,
patronised the ambitious girl, and, by the mere bestowal of confidence,
subtly flattered her. In those days Alma did not feel it as patronage,
for Sibyl's social position was perhaps superior to her own, and in
things of the intellect (apart from artistic endowment) she sincerely
looked up to her friend. Together they trod ground above the heads of
ordinary women in their world. But changes had been at work. Alma now
felt herself, to say the least, on equal terms with Mrs. Carnaby.
Economically, she was secure; whereas Sibyl, notwithstanding the show
she made, drew daily nearer to a grave crisis, and might before long
find herself in a very unpleasant situation. Intellectually, Alma saw
herself in a less modest light than before marriage; the daily
companionship of such a man as her husband had been to her as a second
education; she had quite overtaken Sibyl, if not gone a little beyond
her. The deference she still showed was no longer genuine, and this
kind of affectation, hard to support and readily perceived, is very
perilous to friendship. Conscious of thoughts she must not utter, Alma
naturally attributed to her friend the same sort of reticence. She
feared that Sibyl must often have in mind the loss she had suffered
three years ago, and would contrast her own precarious circumstances
with the comfort of Bennet Frothingham's daughter. Moreover, Mrs.
Carnaby was not in all respects her own self; she had lost something on
her travels; was it a shade of personal delicacy, of mental refinement?
She seemed more inclined to self-assertion, to aim somewhat at worldly
success, to be less careful about the friends she made. Alma felt this
difference, though not clear as to its nature, and insensibly it helped
to draw them apart.

'Yes, Hugh is at Coventry,