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terrible for you.”

      “Well,” said Miss Saumarez, “we have been used to it a long time, it looks quite natural to us. But some people are frightened. It isn’t a thing, however, that kills, I believe. It may go on for years and years.{v.1–10606}”

      “And you”—Evelyn felt that it was almost an irreverence to talk to this young lady as to a school-girl, but still it was to be supposed she was one—“you are still in the school-room, busy with lessons yet?”

      “I don’t think I have ever been much in the school-room,” said the girl. “It has been rather difficult to manage my education. Father liked to have me at home when I was a little thing. I used to make him laugh. We tried several governesses, but they were not very successful; either they preferred to take care of him or they quarrelled with me. I don’t think I was a very nice child,” said Miss Rosamond impartially. “It wasn’t a good school, was it, to have all kinds of pettings and bon-bons because I was funny and could make him laugh, and then turned out, as if I had been a little dog, when he was cross.”

      “My dear!” said Evelyn, dismayed.

      “Oh, I am afraid you think me awful,” said Rosamond, “but really it is all quite true.”

      “It is a long time since I was a girl like you,” said Mrs. Rowland, “and we were not allowed to be so frank and speak our mind; that is the chief difference, I suppose.”

      “Oh, I have always heard from all the old ladies that I am dreadful. But certainly the thing we do now-a-days is to speak our mind—rather a little more than less, don’t you know. We don’t carry any false colours, or pretend to pretty feelings, like the girls in the story-books. What humbugs you must have been in your time!{v.1–10707}”

      “I don’t think we were humbugs,” said Evelyn. She was beginning to be amused by this frank young person, who made her feel so young and inexperienced. It was Evelyn who was the little girl, and Rosamond the sage, acquainted with the world and life.

      “Father says so; but then, he thinks all people are humbugs. He says we really can think of no one but ourselves, whatever we may pretend.”

      “But you mustn’t believe in that,” said Evelyn. “It is a dreadful way of looking at the world. Nobody can tell how much kindness and goodness there is unless they have been in circumstances to try it, which I have. You must not enter upon life with that idea, for it is quite false.”

      “What! when father says so? Oughtn’t I to believe that he knows best?”

      “Oh, when your father says so!” said Evelyn, startled. “My dear, I don’t think your father can mean it. He may say it—in jest——”

      “Oh, don’t be afraid, Mrs. Rowland,” cried the girl, cheerfully. “I don’t take everything he says for gospel. He’s a disappointed man, you know. He never got exactly what he wanted. Mother and he did not get on, I am told: and there is every appearance that Eddy will be a handful, as I suppose father was himself in his day. And then he’s paralysed. That should be set against a lot, shouldn’t it? I always say so to myself when he is nasty to me.”

      “I am very glad that you do,” said Evelyn, with tears in her eyes. “It should indeed stand against a great deal. And as you grow older you will under{v.1–10808}stand better how such dreadful helplessness affects the mind——”

      “Oh,” cried Rosamond, breaking in, “if you think there’s any softening of the brain or that sort of thing, you are very very much mistaken. If you only knew how clever he is! I have heard him take in people—people, you know, like my uncle the bishop, and that sort of person, with an account of pious feelings, and how he knows it is all for his good, and so forth. You would think he was a saint to hear him—and the poor bishop looking so bothered, knowing too much to quite believe it, and yet not daring to contradict him. It was as good as a play. I shrieked with laughter when he was gone, and so did father. It was the funniest thing I ever saw.”

      “My dear!” cried Evelyn again, wringing her hands in protestation; but what could she say? If she had been disposed to take in hand the reformation of Edward Saumarez’s daughter, it could not be by adding to her unerring clear sight and criticism of him. “Do you see much,” she said, in a kind of desperation, “of the bishop?” with a clutch at the moral skirts of some one who might be able to help.

      “Oh no, only when he comes to town. They don’t ask us now to the Palace, for I am sure he never can make up his mind about father, whether he is a real saint or—the other thing. Aunt Rose is the relation you know, not the bishop. It is by mother’s side, so they naturally disapprove of papa.”

      Evelyn did not at all know how to deal with this girl, who was so cognisant of the world and all its{v.1–10909} ways. Rosamond was even more a woman of the world than Madeline Leighton. She believed in less, and she seemed to know more, and her calm girlish voice, and the pearly tints of her infantine radiance of countenance produced upon the middle-aged listener a sensation of utter confusion impossible to describe. She asked hurriedly, with an endeavour to divert the easy stream of words to another subject, “Have you any friends of your own age, my dear, to amuse yourself with?”

      “Oh plenty,” said Rosamond, “quantities! There are such crowds of girls; wherever one goes, nothing but women, women, till one is sick of them. I have a very great friend whom I see constantly, and who is exactly of my way of thinking. As soon as we are old enough we both mean to take up a profession. I have not quite decided upon mine, but she means to be a doctor. She is studying a little now, whenever she can get a moment, and looking forward to the time when she shall be old enough to put down her foot. Of course they will try to forbid it, and that sort of thing. But she has quite made up her mind. As for me, I have not such a clear leading as Madeline. I am still quite in doubt.”

      “Madeline,” said Evelyn. “I wonder if by chance that is Madeline Leighton whom I saw the other day?”

      Miss Saumarez nodded her head. “But you must promise,” she said, “not to betray us to her mother. Of course we quite allow that we are too young to settle upon anything now. She is only seventeen. I{v.1–11010} am nearly two years older, but then, unfortunately, I have not the same clear vocation. And of course something must be allowed for natural hindrances, as long as father lives.”

      “I hope you will never leave him,” said Evelyn warmly. “It is true I am old-fashioned, and do not understand a girl with a profession; but everybody must see that in your case your duty lies at home.”

      “If anybody who was a very good match wanted to marry me,” said the girl with a laugh, “would you then think that my duty lay at home?”

      Evelyn felt herself reduced to absolute imbecility by this bewildering question. “My dear—my dear—you know a great deal too much; you are too wise,” she said.

      “But that’s not an answer,” said Rosamond; “you see the logic of it, and you daren’t give me an answer. You just beg the question. I must go away now; but father told me I was to ask you if I might come again.”

      “If you care to come to such an old-world, old-fashioned, puzzled person as I am,” said Evelyn, with a troubled smile.

      “I should like it, if I may. Father says you are the real good, and a great many people I know only pretend. I should like to know better what the real good was like, so I will come again to-morrow, if I may.”

      “Come, but not because I am the real good. I am a very puzzled person, and you who are only a little girl seem to know a great deal more than I.{v.1–11111}”

      Rosamond smiled, for the first time, a bright and childlike smile. She had smiled and even laughed in the course of her prelections as the same required it. But for the first time her face lighted up. “Oh, perhaps you will find there is not so much in me as you think,” she said, giving her hand to the middle-aged and much-perplexed person before her, after the fashion of the time. I forget what the fashion of the time was in those days. People

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