and passing from flowerlike loveliness to loveliness.

"It's a pity Mr. Yaverland cannot see you now," said the old man, half
from honest jocosity and half from an itch to bring the creature back to
this interesting suffering of hers.

Gasping with laughter, though she kept her eyes gravely and steadily on
her beauty, she answered, "Yes, it is a pity! It is a great pity! He's
very handsome too, you know. We'd make a bonny pair! Oh dear, oh dear!"

Mr. James sat up. "What's that? What is it you're saying? Hec, you're
talking of making a pair, are you?" Amusement always made his voice
sound gross. "Has he asked you to marry him then, ye shy wee besom?"

She swung round on her toes, her face magic with passion and mischief.
"Give me time, Mr. James, give me time!" she cried, and her head fell
back on her long white throat, while her laughter jetted in shaking,
shy, thin gusts like a blackbird's song. And then she ceased. Her head
fell forward. Her gown dropped from her outstretched hands, which she
pressed against her bosom. A second past she had filled with spring this
office damp with autumn; now she made it more asperous and grey than had
November, for her season had changed to the extremest winter. She
pressed her hands so hard against her breast and in a voice weak as if
she were very cold she said, "Oh, God! Oh, God!"

"Eh!" gaped Mr. James.

She had made a fool of herself. She had said dreadful things. She had
boasted about something that could not come true, that would be
horrible if it did. Her face became chalk white with such agony as only
the young can feel.

Mr. James's gouty leg crackled out pains as he tried to rise, and he had
to sink back in his chair and look up at her through the vibrating
silence, whispering, "Nelly, my dear lass."

At that she shot at him such a cold sidelong glance as one might shoot
at a stranger who has let one know that he has overheard an intimacy,
and with movements at once clumsy and precise she got down from her
chair and put it back at the table. She stood quite still, with her
hands resting on it, her face assuming a mean and shrewish expression.
She was remembering a woman who had been rude to her mother, a
schoolfellow of Mrs. Melville's, who had married as well as she had
married badly, and had allowed consciousness of that fact to colour her
manner when they had run against each other in Princes Street. Ellen was
trying to imitate the expression by which this bour