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matter of fact, Miss Sidmouth did not make her a general topic of conversation, being far too much interested in her own and her relations’ affairs, but it seemed to Pamela’s rather morbid imagination that her entrance into a room often meant a sudden awkward break in the conversation, and she hated the idea of being discussed with Uncle William, Cousin Felicia, and the rest of the families. How thankful she was she had kept silent on the subject of Tony’s identity. Some time Miss Sidmouth would have to be told, but not yet—Pamela shrank from exclamations and questions. There would be enough of those in England. So she said no word of her meeting with him in her letters to Aunt Sophia and other members of the family—there could be no possible gain in that.

Pamela had not a large correspondence, and what there was of it was very unsatisfactory. She dutifully wrote to Aunt Sophia by every mail, receiving in return short and stilted communications, their curtness expressive of that injured lady’s unabated disapproval of her niece’s conduct. Girl friends and cousins were unsatisfactory too. They wrote occasionally, but really———! Pamela had been so queer before she went away, and everyone was agreed that her behaviour was melodramatic and ridiculous in the extreme. She never asked our advice—how can we properly sympathise?—and besides, it seems heartless to write her long accounts of all the dances and things that she might have been at, if she had not been so stupid. Some of this point of view filtered through the hurried scrawls addressed, under protest, to “Miss Pamela Learmonth,” so it was not surprising that mail-day with Pamela was not a festival, but rather a day of reckoning. She was a lonely little girl, and she found time to wonder vaguely if Tony really meant to write to her.

“I wish he had gone straight to England,” she thought; “but I suppose he naturally would feel there was no