’L’ame du paysan se vautre dans la boue comme la mienne se plait dans la soie.’

’Dans la soie! dans la soie! oh, ce Milord, ce Milord!’

‘Oui, madame,’ he added, lowering his voice, ’dans le blanc paradis de votre corsage.’

Three days after life at Brookfield had resumed its ordinary course.  Once breakfast was over, Arthur retired to the consideration of the pectoral muscles of the ancient Briton, Milord drank his glass of sherry at half-past one, and Mrs. Barton devoted herself to the double task of amusing him and encouraging Olive with visions of future fame.  Alice was therefore left definitely to herself, and without hindrance or comment was allowed to set up her writing-table, and spend as much time as she pleased in her bedroom.

Several sheets of foolscap paper covered with large open handwriting lay upon the table.  Upon the first page, with a line ruled beneath it, stood the title:  ‘The Diary of a Plain Girl—­Notes and Sensations.’  She had just laid aside her pen and was waiting for Cecilia.

’Oh, Alice darling, how are you?  I am delighted—­I am so delighted to see you.  Let me kiss you, let me see you; I have been longing for you for weeks—­for months.’

Alice bent her face down, and then, holding each other’s hands, the girls stood looking through a deep and expressive silence into each other’s eyes.

’I wish, Alice, I could tell you how glad I am to have you back:  it seems like heaven to see you again.  You look so nice, so true, so sweet, so perfect.  There never was anyone so perfect as you, Alice.’

’Cecilia dear, you shouldn’t talk to me like that; it is absurd.  Indeed, I don’t think it is quite right.’

‘Not quite right,’ replied the cripple sadly; ’what do you mean?  Why is it wrong—­why should it be wrong for me to love you?’

’I don’t mean to say that it is wrong; you misunderstand me; but—­but—­well, I don’t know how to explain myself, but—­’

‘I know, I know, I know,’ said Cecilia, and her nervous sensitivity revealed thoughts in Alice’s mind—­thoughts of which Alice herself was not distinctly conscious, just as a photograph exposes irregularities in the texture of a leaf that the naked eye would not perceive.

‘If Harding were to speak to you so, you wouldn’t think it wrong.’

Alice’s face flushed a little, and she said, with a certain resoluteness in her voice, ’Cecilia, I wish you wouldn’t talk to me in this way.  You give me great pain.’

’I am sorry if I do, but I can’t help it.  I am jealous of the words that are spoken to you, of the air you breathe, of the ground you walk upon.  How, then, can I help hating that man?’

’I do not wish to argue this point with you, Cecilia, nor am I sure that I understand it.  There is no one I like better than you, dear, but that we should be jealous of each other is absurd.’