“Well, I am waiting to give you any information in my power.”

“Oh! to be sure, the question.  Well, it is a very simple one.  Who are you engaged to?”

Arthur nearly sprang off his chair with astonishment.

“What makes you think that I am engaged?” he asked.

She broke into a merry peal of laughter.  Ah! if he could have known what that laugh cost her.

“What makes me think that you are engaged!” she answered, in a tone of raillery.  “Why, of course you would have been at my feet long ago, if it had not been so.  Come, don’t be reticent.  I shall not laugh at you.  What is she like?” (Generally a woman’s first question about a rival.) “Is she as good-looking—­well, as I am, say—­for, though you may not think it, I have been thought good-looking.”

“She is quite different from you; she is very tall and fair, like an angel in a picture, you know.”

“Oh! then there is a ‘she,’ and a ‘she like an angel.’  Very different indeed from me, I should think.  How nicely I caught you out;” and she laughed again.

“Why did you want to catch me out?” said Arthur, on whose ear Mrs. Carr’s tone jarred; he could not tell why.

“Feminine curiosity, and a natural anxiety to fathom the reasons of your sighs, that is all.  But never mind, Mr. Heigham, you and I shall not quarrel because you are engaged to be married.  You shall tell me the story when you like, for I am sure there is a story—­no, not this afternoon; the sun has given me a headache, and I am going to sleep it off.  Other people’s love-stories are very interesting to me, the more so because I have reached the respectable age of thirty without being the subject of one myself;” and again she laughed, this time at her own falsehood.  But, when he had gone, there was no laughter in her eyes, nothing but tears, bitter, burning tears.

“Agatha,” said Mildred that evening, “I am sick of this place.  I want to go to the Isle of Wight.  It must be quite nice there now.  We will go by the next Currie boat.”

“My dear Mildred,” replied Miss Terry, aghast, “if you were going back so soon, why did you not leave me behind you?  And just as we were getting so nicely settled here too, and I shall be so sorry to say good-bye to that young Heigham, he is such a nice young man!  Why don’t you marry him?  I really thought you liked him.  But, perhaps he is coming to the Isle of Wight too.  Oh, that dreadful bay!”

Mildred winced at Miss Terry’s allusions to Arthur, of whom that lady had grown extremely fond.

“I am very sorry, dear,” she said, hastily; “but I am bored to death, and it is such a bad insect year:  so really you must begin to pack up.”

Miss Terry began to pack accordingly, but, when next she alluded to the subject of their departure, Mildred affected surprise, and asked her what she meant.  The astonished Agatha referred her to her own words, and was met by a laughing disclaimer.