ost in despair. "Of course I know,"
she said. "What is the use of telling stories about it any longer?"

"It is not too late yet, Ayala. If we both go to Uncle Tom he will
let us change it."

"Why should it be changed? If I could change it by lifting up my
little finger I could not do it. Why should it not be you as well
as me? They have tried me, and,--as Aunt Emmeline says,--I have not
suited."

"Aunt Dosett is not ill-natured, my darling."

"No, I dare say not. It is I that am bad. It is bad to like pretty
things and money, and to hate poor things. Or, rather, I do not
believe it is bad at all, because it is so natural. I believe it is
all a lie as to its being wicked to love riches. I love them, whether
it is wicked or not."

"Oh, Ayala!"

"Do not you? Don't let us be hypocritical, Lucy, now at the last
moment. Did you like the way in which they lived in Kingsbury
Crescent?"

Lucy paused before she answered. "I like it better than I did," she
said. "At any rate, I would willingly go back to Kingsbury Crescent."

"Yes,--for my sake."

"Indeed I would, my pet."

"And for your sake I would rather die than stay. But what is the good
of talking about it, Lucy. You and I have no voice in it, though
it is all about ourselves. As you say, we are like two tame birds,
who have to be moved from one cage into another just as the owner
pleases. We belong either to Uncle Tom or Uncle Dosett, just as they
like to settle it. Oh, Lucy, I do so wish that I were dead."

"Ayala, that is wicked."

"How can I help it, if I am wicked? What am I to do when I get there?
What am I to say to them? How am I to live? Lucy, we shall never see
each other."

"I will come across to you constantly."

"I meant to do so, but I didn't. They are two worlds, miles asunder.
Lucy, will they let Isadore Hamel come here?" Lucy blushed and
hesitated. "I am sure he will come."

Lucy remembered that she had given her friend her address at Queen's
Gate, and felt that she would seem to have done it as though she
had known that she was about to be transferred to the other uncle's
house. "It will make no difference if he does," she said.

"Oh, I have such a dream,--such a castle-in-the-air! If I could think
it might ever be so, then I should not want to die."

"What do you dream?" But Lucy, though she asked the question, knew
the dream.

"If you had a little house of your own, oh, ever so tiny; and if you
and he--?"

"There is no he."