t does it matter? it is very good for the complexion, this damp; it
softens the skin, it clears your colour. I see the improvement every
day."

"Do you think so?" said Bice, going up to the long mirror which had been
established in a sort of niche against the wall, and draped as
everything was draped, with graceful hangings. She went up to it and put
her face close, looking with some anxiety at the image which she found
there. "I do not see it," she said. "You are too sanguine. I am no
better than I was. I have been racing in the long gallery with the
child; that makes one's blood flow."

"You do well," said the Contessa, nodding her head. "I cannot take any
notice of the child; it is too much for me. They are odious at that
age."

"Ah! they are delightful," said Bice. "They are so good to play with,
they ask no questions, and are always pleased. I put him on my shoulder
and we fly. I wish that I might have a gymnastique, trapeze,
what-you-call it, in that long gallery; it would be heaven."

The Contessa uttered an easy exclamation meaning nothing, which
translated into English would have been a terrible oath. "Do not do it,
in the name of----they will be shocked, oh, beyond everything."

Bice, still standing close to the glass, examining critically her cheek
which she pinched, answered with a laugh. "She is shocked already. When
I say that you will marry me well, if I turn out as I ought, she is full
of horror. She says it is not necessary in England that a young girl
should marry, that there are other ways."

The Contessa started to her feet. "Giove!" she cried, "Baccho! that
insipidity, that puritan. And I who have kept you from every soil. _She_
speak of other ways. Oh, it is too much!"

Bice turned from the glass to address a look of surprise to her
patroness. "Reassure yourself, Madama," she said. "What Milady said was
this, that I might work if I willed, and escape from marrying--that to
marry was not everything. It appears that in England one may make one's
living as if (she says) one were a man."

"As if one were a man!"

"That is what Milady said," Bice answered demurely. "I think she would
help me to work, to get something to do. But she did not tell me what it
would be; perhaps to teach children; perhaps to work with the needle. I
know that is how it happens in the Tauchnitz. You do not read them, and,
therefore, do not know; but I am instructed in all these things. The
girl who is poor like me is