r
ladyship; and of late it had become a matter of some difficulty with her
to keep her head quite still: it seemed possessed by an unaccountable
desire to imitate the shaking of her hands. She was seated in an
easy-chair as Janet entered the room. Her breakfast equipage was on a
small table at her elbow.

As the door closed behind Janet, she stood still and curtsied.

Lady Chillington placed her glass to her eye, and with a lean forefinger
beckoned to Janet to draw near. Janet advanced, her eyes fixed steadily
on those of Lady Chillington. A yard or two from the table she stopped
and curtsied again.

"I hope that I have the happiness of finding your ladyship quite well,"
she said, in a low, clear voice, in which there was not the slightest
tremor or hesitation.

"And pray, Miss Hope, what can it matter to you whether I am well or
ill? Answer me that, if you please."

"I owe so much to your ladyship, I have been such a pensioner on your
bounty ever since I can remember anything, that mere selfishness alone,
if no higher motive be allowed me, must always prompt me to feel an
interest in the state of your ladyship's health."

"Candid, at any rate. But I wish you clearly to understand that whatever
obligation you may feel yourself under to me for what is past and gone,
you have no claim of any kind upon me for the future. The tie between us
can be severed by me at any moment."

"Seven years ago your ladyship impressed that fact so strongly on my
mind that I have never forgotten it. I have never felt myself to be
other than a dependent on your bounty."

"A very praiseworthy feeling, young lady, and one which I trust you will
continue to cherish. Not that I wish other people to look upon you as a
dependent. I wish--" She broke off abruptly, and stared helplessly round
the room. Suddenly her head began to shake. "Heaven help me! what do I
wish?" she exclaimed; and with that she began to cry, and seemed all in
a moment to have grown older by twenty years.

Janet, in her surprise, made a step or two forward, but Lady Chillington
waved her fiercely back. "Fool! fool! why don't you go away?" she cried.
"Why do you stare at me so? Go away, and send Dance to me. You have
spoilt my complexion for the day."

Janet left the room and sent Dance to her mistress, and then went off
for a ramble in the grounds. The seal of desolation and decay was set
upon everything. The garden, no longer the choice home of choice
flowers, was