it lasted. Perhaps it was well that she was forced to think about her
own prospects, which were none of the brightest.

"Shall you go to Rookleigh?" Percival asked her a couple of days later.

She shook her head: "No: I'm too proud, I suppose, or too miserable: I
can't have my failure here talked over. Aunt Lisle's conversation is
full of sharp little pin-pricks, which are all very well when they don't
go straight into one's heart."

He saw her lip quiver as she turned her face away. "Where will you go,
then?" he asked with gentle persistence. It was partly on his own
account, for he feared that a blow was in store for him, and he wanted
to know the worst.

"I shall not go anywhere. I shall not leave Brenthill."

The blood seemed to rush strongly to his heart: his veins were full of
warm life. She would not leave Brenthill!

"I will stay, at any rate, while Miss Crawford remains here. She will
not speak to me, she has forbidden me to attempt to see her, but I
cannot go away and leave her here alone. I may not be of any use--I do
not suppose I shall be--but while she is here I will not go."

"But if she left?"

"Still, I would not leave Brenthill if I could get any work to do. I
feel as if I must stay here, if only to show that I have not gone away
with Bertie to live on Emmeline's money. Poor Emmeline! And when he used
to talk of my not working any more, and he would provide for me, I
thought he meant that he would make a fortune with his opera. What a
fool I was!"

"It was a folly to be proud of."

He was rewarded with a faint smile, but the delicate curve of the
girl's lips relaxed into sadness all too soon.

The table at her side was strewn with sheets of roughly-blotted music,
mixed with others daintily neat, which Judith herself had copied. "His
opera," she repeated, laying the leaves in order. "Emmeline will be
promoted to the office of critic and admirer now, I suppose. But I think
the admiration will be too indiscriminate even for Bertie. Poor
Emmeline!"

"What are you going to do with all these?" said Thorne, laying his hand
on the papers.

"I am putting them together to send to him. I had a letter this morning,
so I know his address now. He seems very hopeful, as usual, and thinks
her father will forgive them before long."

"And do you think there is a chance of it?"

"No, I don't. Bertie did not hear what Mr. Nash said that afternoon to
Miss Crawford and to me," she replied; and once agai