ither had seen her.

The apparition had been transient--scarce seen ere gone; but its
electric passage left her veins kindled, her soul insurgent. It found
her despairing, it left her desperate--two different states.

"Oh, had he but been alone! had he but seen me!" was her cry. "He would
have said something. He would have given me his hand. He _does_, he
_must_, love me a little. He would have shown some token of affection.
In his eye, on his lips, I should have read comfort; but the chance is
lost. The wind, the cloud's shadow, does not pass more silently, more
emptily than he. I have been mocked, and Heaven is cruel!"

Thus, in the utter sickness of longing and disappointment, she went
home.

The next morning at breakfast, where she appeared white-cheeked and
miserable-looking as one who had seen a ghost, she inquired of Mr.
Helstone, "Have you any objection, uncle, to my inquiring for a
situation in a family?"

Her uncle, ignorant as the table supporting his coffee-cup of all his
niece had undergone and was undergoing, scarcely believed his ears.

"What whim now?" he asked. "Are you bewitched? What can you mean?"

"I am not well, and need a change," she said.

He examined her. He discovered she had _experienced_ a change, at any
rate. Without his being aware of it, the rose had dwindled and faded to
a mere snowdrop; bloom had vanished, flesh wasted; she sat before him
drooping, colourless, and thin. But for the soft expression of her brown
eyes, the delicate lines of her features, and the flowing abundance of
her hair, she would no longer have possessed a claim to the epithet
pretty.

"What on earth is the matter with you?" he asked. "What is wrong? How
are you ailing?"

No answer; only the brown eyes filled, the faintly-tinted lips trembled.

"Look out for a situation, indeed! For what situation are you fit? What
have you been doing with yourself? You are not well."

"I should be well if I went from home."

"These women are incomprehensible. They have the strangest knack of
startling you with unpleasant surprises. To-day you see them bouncing,
buxom, red as cherries, and round as apples; to-morrow they exhibit
themselves effete as dead weeds, blanched and broken down. And the
reason of it all? That's the puzzle. She has her meals, her liberty, a
good house to live in, and good clothes to wear, as usual. A while since
that sufficed to keep her handsome and cheery, and there she sits now a
poor, littl