. You remember Labiche's comedy, _Les
Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon_? Of course, every man hates having had his
life saved, after it is over; and you can imagine how he must hate having
it saved by a woman. But what was I to do? In either case he would be
lost to me, whether I let him drown or whether I rescued him. So, as it
really made no difference, I rescued him. He was very grateful, and left
the next morning.

"It is my destiny. No man has ever fallen in love with me, and no man
ever will. I used to worry myself about it when I was younger. As a
child I hugged to my bosom for years an observation I had overheard an
aunt of mine whisper to my mother one afternoon as they sat knitting and
talking, not thinking I was listening. 'You never can tell,' murmured my
aunt, keeping her eyes carefully fixed upon her needles; 'children change
so. I have known the plainest girls grow up into quite beautiful women.
I should not worry about it if I were you--not yet awhile.' My mother
was not at all a bad-looking woman, and my father was decidedly handsome;
so there seemed no reason why I should not hope. I pictured myself the
ugly duckling of Andersen's fairy-tale, and every morning on waking I
would run straight to my glass and try to persuade myself that the
feathers of the swan were beginning at last to show themselves." Miss
Ramsbotham laughed, a genuine laugh of amusement, for of self-pity not a
trace was now remaining to her.

"Later I plucked hope again," continued Miss Ramsbotham her confession,
"from the reading of a certain school of fiction more popular twenty
years ago than now. In these romances the heroine was never what you
would call beautiful, unless in common with the hero you happened to
possess exceptional powers of observation. But she was better than that,
she was good. I do not regard as time wasted the hours I spent studying
this quaint literature. It helped me, I am sure, to form habits that
have since been of service to me. I made a point, when any young man
visitor happened to be staying with us, of rising exceptionally early in
the morning, so that I always appeared at the breakfast-table fresh,
cheerful, and carefully dressed, with, when possible, a dew-besprinkled
flower in my hair to prove that I had already been out in the garden. The
effort, as far as the young man visitor was concerned, was always thrown
away; as a general rule, he came down late himself, and generally too
d