This was by no means an easy matter for a comparatively friendless girl, as Mavis soon discovered.  Her numerous applications had, so far, only resulted in an expenditure of stationery and postage stamps.  Then, Miss Annie Mee kindly volunteered to write to the more prosperously circumstanced of the few one-time pupils with whom she had kept up something of a correspondence.  Those who replied offered no suggestion of help, with the exception of Mrs Devitt.  So much for the past:  the future stretched, an unexplored country, before her, which, to one of her sanguine disposition, seemed to offer boundless opportunities of happiness.  It appeared a strange conjunction of circumstances that she should have been sent for by a person living in her native place.  It seemed fortuitous to Mavis that she should earn her bread in a neighbourhood where she would be known, if only because of the high reputation which her dear father had enjoyed.  It all seemed as if it had been arranged like something out of a book.  Amelia’s words, referring to the certainty of her marrying, came into her mind; she tried to dismiss them, but without success.  Then, her thoughts flew back to Charlie Perigal and Archie Windebank, youthful admirers, rivals for her favours.  She wondered what had become of them; if she should see them again:  a thousand things in which she allowed her imagination to wing itself in sentimental flight.

She was of an ardent temperament; men attracted her, although, since she had been grown up, she had never exchanged anything that could be construed into a love passage with a member of the opposite sex, opportunities for meeting those whom she considered her equals being wanting in her dull round of daily teaching.  Sometimes, a face she had seen in the street, or a character she encountered in a book attracted her, when she would think of her hero, allowing her mind to place him in tender situations with herself, for the few hours her infatuation lasted, showing her to be of an impressionable and romantic disposition.  Although she often felt her loneliness, and the consequent need of human companionship, her pride would never suffer her to take advantage of the innumerable facilities which the streets of London offer a comely girl to make chance friendships, facilities which, for thousands of friendless young women in big towns, are their only chance for meeting the male of their species.

Mavis’s pride was not of the kind with which providence endows millions of foolish people, apparently by way of preventing them from realising their insignificance, or, at the worst, making their smallness tolerable.  It arose from knowledge of the great and inexhaustible treasure of love which was hers to bestow; so convinced was she of the value of this wealth, that she guarded it jealously, not permitting it to suffer taint or deterioration from commerce with those who, if only from curiosity, might strive to examine her riches.