should get the same things for her young lady.  She appeared to let Mrs. Lander decide between having her brushes in ivory or silver, but there was really no choice for her, and they came in silver.  She knew not only her own place, but the places of her two ladies, and she presently had them in such training that they were as proficient in what they might and might not do for themselves and for each other, as if making these distinctions were the custom of their lives.

Their hearts would both have gone out to Ellida, but Ellida kept them at a distance with the smooth respectfulness of the iron hand in the glove of velvet; and Clementina first learned from her to imagine the impassable gulf between mistress and maid.

At the end of her month she gave them, out of a clear sky, a week’s warning.  She professed no grievance, and was not moved by Mrs. Lander’s appeal to say what wages she wanted.  She would only say that she was going to take a place an Commonwealth Avenue, where a friend of hers was living, and when the week was up, she went, and left her late mistresses feeling rather blank.  “I presume we shall have to get anotha,” said Mrs. Lander.

“Oh, not right away!” Clementina pleaded.

“Well, not right away,” Mrs. Lander assented; and provisionally they each took the other into her keeping, and were much freer and happier together.

Soon after Clementina was startled one morning, as she was going in to breakfast, by seeing Mr. Fane at the clerk’s desk.  He did not see her; he was looking down at the hotel register, to compute the bill of a departing guest; but when she passed out she found him watching for her, with some letters.

“I didn’t know you were with us,” he said, with his pensive smile, “till I found your letters here, addressed to Mrs. Lander’s care; and then I put two and two together.  It only shows how small the world is, don’t you think so?  I’ve just got back from my vacation; I prefer to take it in the fall of the year, because it’s so much pleasanter to travel, then.  I suppose you didn’t know I was here?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Clementina.  “I never dreamed of such a thing.”

“To be sure; why should you?” Fane reflected.  “I’ve been here ever since last spring.  But I’ll say this, Miss Claxon, that if it’s the least unpleasant to you, or the least disagreeable, or awakens any kind of associations—­”

“Oh, no!” Clementina protested, and Fane was spared the pain of saying what he would do if it were.

He bowed, and she said sweetly, “It’s pleasant to meet any one I’ve seen before.  I suppose you don’t know how much it’s changed at Middlemount since you we’ e thea.”  Fane answered blankly, while he felt in his breast pocket, Oh, he presumed so; and she added:  “Ha’dly any of the same guests came back this summer, and they had more in July than they had in August, Mrs. Atwell said.  Mr. Mahtin, the chef, is gone, and newly all the help is different.”