ay from them more actively than from the
rest, but it was because they bristled, naturally enough, with dilemmas
and distresses which she made a literal effort to forget. As a matter of
fact, there were not very many days, and they were largely filled with
millinery. Even the dilemmas and distresses, when they asserted
themselves, were more or less overswept, as if for the sake of decency,
by billows of spotted muslin, with which Celine, who felt the romance of
the situation, made herself marvellously clever. Celine, indeed, was
worth in this exigency many times her wages. Alicia hastened to "lend"
her to the fullest extent, and she spent hours with Miss Filbert
contriving and arranging, a kind of conductor of her mistress's
beneficence. It became plain that Laura preferred the conductor to the
source, and they stitched together while she, with careful reserves,
watched for the casual sidelights upon modes and manners that came from
the lips of the maid. At other times she occupied herself with her
Bible--she had adopted, as will be guessed, the grateful theory of Mrs.
Sand, that she had only changed the sphere of her ministrations. She had
several times felt, seated beside Celine, how grateful she ought to be
that her spiritual paths for the future would be paths of such
pleasantness, though Celine herself seemed to stand rather far from
their border, probably because she was a Catholic. Mrs. Sand came
occasionally to upbuild her, and after that Laura had always a fresh
remembrance of how much she had done in giving so generous a friend as
Duff Lindsay to the Army in Calcutta. It was reasonable enough that
there should be a falling off in Mr. Lindsay's attendance just now in
Laura's absence, but when they were united, Mrs. Sand hoped there would
be very few evening services when she, the Ensign, would miss their
bright faces. Lindsay himself came every afternoon, and Laura made his
tea for him with precision, and pressed upon him, solicitously,
everything there was to eat. He found her submissive and wishful to be
pleasant. She sat up straight and said it was much hotter than they had
it this time of year up-country but nothing at all to complain of yet.
He also discovered her to be practical; she showed him the bills for the
muslins, and explained one or two bargains. She seemed to wish to make
it clear to him that it need not be, after all, so very expensive to
take a wife. In the course of a few days one of the costum