she may be taking her own way
with the thing. I am certain to hate it."

"I will talk to you about it as early as you please to-morrow, if that
will do," returned Mary.

She knew nothing about dressmaking beyond what came of a true taste,
and the experience gained in cutting out and making her own garments,
which she had never yet found a dressmaker to do to her mind; and,
indeed, Hesper had been led to ask her advice mainly from observing how
neat the design of her dresses was, and how faithfully they fitted her.
Dress is a sort of freemasonry between girls.

"But I can not have the horses to-morrow," said Hesper.

"I might," pondered Mary aloud, after a moment's silence, "walk out to
Durnmelling this evening after the shop is shut. By that time I shall
have been able to think; I find it impossible, with you before me."

Hesper acknowledged the compliment with a very pleasant smile. If it be
true, as I may not doubt, that women, in dressing, have the fear of
women and not of men before their eyes, then a compliment from some
women must be more acceptable to some than a compliment from any man
but the specially favored.

"Thank you a thousand times," she drawled, sweetly. "Then I shall
expect you. Ask for my maid. She will take you to my room. Good-by for
the present."

As soon as she was gone, Mary, her mind's eye full of her figure, her
look, her style, her motion, gave herself to the important question of
the dress conceived by Hesper; and during her dinner-hour contrived to
cut out and fit to her own person the pattern of a garment such as she
supposed intended in the not very lucid description she had given her.
When she was free, she set out with it for Durnmelling.

It was rather a long walk, the earlier part of it full of sad reminders
of the pleasure with which, greater than ever accompanied her to
church, she went to pay her Sunday visit at Thornwick; but the latter
part, although the places were so near, almost new to her: she had
never been within the gate of Durnmelling, and felt curious to see the
house of which she had so often heard.

The butler opened the door to her--an elderly man, of conscious dignity
rather than pride, who received the "young person" graciously, and,
leaving her in the entrance-hall, went to find "Miss Mortimer's maid,"
he said, though there was but one lady's-maid in the establishment.

The few moments she had to wait far more than repaid her for the
trouble she had tak