some wicked wicked people are keeping you out
of it. Think of their changing your name, too,
the cruel wretches!"

"But you will write, Polly, won't you; you
know you promised to?"

"Yes, my darling," returned Miss Marygold,
with a touch of sadness in her voice; "I'll write,
but goodness knows whether you will ever get
my letters. Madame will 'sequestrate' them, or
I'm very much mistaken. As for coming to see
you, the cross old thing will never let me darken
her doors again, I'm certain. She has spent my
premium, and got all she could out of dear pa,
and it's very little she cares about me now. I
wonder whether they paid a premium with you,
or so much a year!"

And so, Polly Marygold took her merry face
and her wavy black hair away, and the world
became indeed a desert to Lily. Polly had
obtained a situation as governess in the family of a
French nobleman, in Brittany. It would be a
relief, she said, to find some children who
were to be brought up as ladies, and not as
governesses.

It has been said that Lily's very name had
been changed. Not much stress was laid upon
her retaining or bearing her christian name of
Lily; only, as Lilies were numerous in the school,
she was never so addressed in the class-room.
But her appellation of Floris was rigorously
condemned, and she was informed that henceforward
she was to be Mademoiselle Pauline. It did
not much matter. Lily felt as though she
had no longer a name at all. Once, going up
into a great store-room where the girls' boxes
were kept, she found that "Miss Floris" had
been painted out from the well-remembered
trunk with which Cutwig and Co. had fitted her
out; and she burst into bitter tears, less at the
thought of the social extinction with which it was
sought to visit her, than at the recollection of
the two hours passed in the old City shop where
Mr. Rauns and 'Melia were so kind to her, and
where Cutwig and Co. fitted out all the world.

Often, too, she thought of that tall gentleman
who had kissed her on the forehead at Greenwich,
and talked to the strange lady in the
balcony. The minutest circumstance connected
with the dinner dwelt steadfastly in her mind.
She could see the splendid old gentleman with
his chains and rings, and his fringe of white
whiskers; the military gentleman with his black
stock, dyed moustachios, strapped-down trousers
and spurs; she could hear the laughter, and the
clinking of the glasses, and the wine gurgling; the
warm odour of the viands came up gently again
to titillate her sense of smell. She could see the
grey Thames water, the lagging barges, the ships
slowly sailing across the field of view, the Essex
shore in the distance, the ruddy sunset behind
all. But the tall gentleman who had held her
between his knees, and filled her plate at dinner,
and fondled her, was salient and prominent above
all these things. His hair, his clothes, his kindly
drawl, his pitying eyes, his hands, so strong-
looking yet so tender, were all present to her.
And the more she thought of him, the more she
wept; but why she wept, she could not tell.

Then would pass before her a terrible image.
That night in the park. How soft and calm the
scene was. How happy and peaceful the deer
seemed. With what quiet cheerfulness the
distant lights, in the hospital wards, in the houses
of the town, in the rigging of the ships, twinkled!
But then the fierce and angry words of the
strange lady came up in grim contrast, and
marred all this tranquil loveliness. Lily remembered
how she had gripped her arm, and looked
upon her with darkling, lowering eyes. And she
wept no more; but shuddered.

Now, all had changed. Great gulfs yawned
between the few and troubled episodes of her
young life. The last was the gloomiest, dreariest,
strangest of all. She was in Paris, the city
which the strange lady had declared to be the
only city in the world worth living in.

This was Lily's Paris:

To rise before it was light in winter-time. To
be mewed up till breakfast in the dark school-
room, nine-tenths of whose area were icy chill,
and the tenth red-hot from the dead baking
lowering presence of the stove. To brood over
lessons, lessons, lessons, from half an hour after
eight until twelve, then to crowd into the
refectory for the second breakfast. Then (if haply
she were not under punishment) to wander into
the playground till two. Then to fag at lessons,
lessons again, till five. Then, once more to flock
into the refectory to dinner. Then after another
hour's wandering in the playground, if it were
fine, or cowering in the schoolroom if it were
wet, to go through an hour's hideous torture
until bedtime—a torture which was called "the
study hour"—a time when the girls were
supposed to be meditating over the tasks of the day
wliich had just passed, and speculating over
those of the morrow which was to come—a time
when neither books, nor papers, nor slates were
allowed; but when absolute and immovable
silence was enjoined, and the movement of a
hand, the shuffling of a foot, the turning of a
head, was punished by bad marks—when a cough
was penal, and a sneeze intolerable—when if a
girl, rendered desperate by this excruciating
command to be mute, would sometimes break silence
coûte que coûte—ask some irrelevant question,
make some incoherent remark—she would be
sentenced to "hold her tongue" for a quarter of an
hour—to hold it literally, taking the offending
member between her thumb and fore-finger, and
striving to retain her hold upon it with the most
ludicrously lamentable results of slipperiness—
when, if another girl, as would often happen,
dropped off to sleep, she would be doomed to
stand on one leg for five minutes, and so, in
drowsiness that was not to be subdued, would
doze off again, and stagger, and come at last
to the ground,—to be, to do, and to suffer all
these things were among Lily's first experiences
of the only city in the world worth living in.